


O Daughter of Babylon

by conceptofzero



Series: Waters of Babylon [3]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: F/M, the Legion is a content warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 19:41:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21481768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptofzero/pseuds/conceptofzero
Summary: Courier recognizes the shape of his shoulders before she recognizes his face, which is completely understandable. She's still getting used to him looking at her with an ordinary man's face instead of sharp blue eyes through bandages, but she's seen those shoulders plenty of times before. Actually, if he was turned around, she'd probably know him from his ass. She's looked at his ass plenty of times. The man looks good in a pair of jeans. He still looks good in them, since that's what he's wearing now, but she can't see his ass when he's facing her way."It's you!" she says to Joshua as he's dragged in and dropped in a chair.The once-Legionaries-now-whatever-this-band-of-idiots-is-calling-themselves pauses. "You know the Malpais Legate?""Joshua," She corrects him. "He's Joshua now."
Relationships: Female Courier/Joshua Graham
Series: Waters of Babylon [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1166759
Comments: 5
Kudos: 109





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note: This fic does not have any explicit rape but it does have discussions of the Legion's sexual assault victims and the final chapter has a non-graphic sequence where a minor character is being sexually assaulted.

Courier recognizes the shape of his shoulders before she recognizes his face, which is completely understandable. She's still getting used to him looking at her with an ordinary man's face instead of sharp blue eyes through bandages, but she's seen those shoulders plenty of times before. Actually, if he was turned around, she'd probably know him from his ass. She's looked at his ass plenty of times. The man looks good in a pair of jeans. He still looks good in them, since that's what he's wearing now, but she can't see his ass when he's facing her way.

She also can't change the angle she's seeing him at, which is tilted, since she's on the ground and chained to a chair. The remains of the Legion are not fucking around, since they've forgone ropes and gone with chains which, hey, can't blame 'em. Looks like they finally learned from the mistakes of the other scattered and segmented parts of the Legion and figured out that maybe, just maybe, they needed to try harder to stop Courier in her tracks.

"It's you!" she says to Joshua as he's dragged in and dropped in a chair.

The once-Legionaries-now-whatever-this-band-of-idiots-is-calling-themselves pauses. "You know the Malpais Legate?"

"Joshua," She corrects him. "He's Joshua now. How's the pain?"

It's a great distraction. Between the clearly taboo casual use of Joshua, and the fact that Courier 6 and Joshua Graham know each other, it gives Joshua a chance to strike, which he does. He slams his shoulder straight into the throat of the nearest ex-Legion-still-idiot's throat. Courier uses the distraction to her advantage too, straining against the chair like she has been for the past thirty minutes. The metal's old and weak and someone clearly tried to weld it together at some point, but they did a bad job. It's those weld points that she's been working on, and when she reefs on them, she hears the brittle crack of the soldering as it gives way under the strain of the chains. The back snaps straight off and she surges forward, a mass of chains and bits of chair, and slams into the legs of the other idiot.

It's not an easy fight. She's on the ground, which means she's at a disadvantage until she can get her arms out. That leaves her open for the man she's attacking to kick her in the face and chest, which he does. He's a pretty good kicker too, because three blows leaves her ears ringing, and she hears a crunch as his foot connects. Her vision goes red and pain explodes from her face, coming in throbbing waves after the first burst. But she's figured out that pain is something you can push through, and she does. She gets her idiot down, and after some ugly wrestling, she gets her chains wrapping around his neck and promptly strangles him to death. And when he looks purple, she twists and snaps his neck. Just to be sure.

Her vision's swimming and the red film is still coating half her field of view. She looks up to see how Joshua's doing. Pretty good. He's got his arms bound still but he's making short work of his idiot, having gotten him on the ground and now driving a knee straight into his chest. Joshua brings his head down and smashes it straight into the man's nose like a battering ram. It's pretty effective. When he raises his head, there's blood trailing down his face and over his mouth.

"More than tolerable," Joshua tells her through a bleeding nose.

Courier beams despite the absolutely nauseating amount of pain radiating out of her skull. "How'd you end up out here?"

"When I finished my work in Zion Canyon, I headed north, along the banks of the river to find my people once more. This ragged remain of the Legion was waiting for me." He offers his hands to her, still tied tight.

"Yeah, there's a whole bunch of these little groups all over the place. I've been trying to clean them up when I can, but you know how it is." Courier struggles out of the mess of chains still hanging on her, and steals a machete off the body of the idiot whose neck she snapped. The binds on Joshua's wrist are cutting in deep and tight, and they've drawn blood repeatedly, judging from the dried remains along his arms. She cuts the rope and frees him. "It was a lot easier to kill 'em when they were all in one big easy to find area. Now they're just all over the place and they're like radroaches." 

Joshua checks his wrists briefly once he can bring them around, and then he's catching her before she can move on, grasping her face in his hands. He gets a good look at her busted eye. He frowns. "Can you see?" 

"A little. I think it got broken. I heard something crunch. Did the eye pop?" She can't feel anything liquidy dripping down her face, but you never know. Maybe popped eyes feel different than how they look. 

He tips her face up some. "No. The eye's intact." 

"Oh, good. That would be a hard one to fix." The pain is something else, and Courier just takes a moment to steady herself. Then, she remembers, and she smiles, coming in and giving him a tight hug. "It's good to see you. It's really, really good to see you." 

Joshua's chest heaves in a muted laugh, and he sets an arm around her as well, giving her a quick, somewhat awkward pat on the back. "And you as well, Courier." 

She gives him one last hard squeeze, enjoying that she can hug him at all without causing him pain, before she lets go and gets focused on the present - and on the massive pain in her skull. "Hey, you have any of those painkillers I made you on hand?"

"They confiscated everything I had on me." The fingers still on her face press near the socket and the whole world whites out for a moment from the pain. She can hear a low, pained groan coming from somewhere nearby. It's not until he lets go that the noise stops. And it's not until the noise stops that she realizes that she was the one making it. Oh. Huh. That bad. 

"Okay. No worries. They'll have all our stuff together here somewhere." She focuses on the next step, stepping back and crouching down by the nearest corpse to strip the bodies of any other weapons on them. Three spears. A super sledge. And a power fist. No guns, though. She lays them out and gestures vaguely to them. "Hey, which do you want?"

"I was never particularly good with bladed weapons. You keep those. We'll find a gun soon enough." He picks up the power fist and slides it on. Courier takes the machete and manages to get the super sledge on her back in her holder. Forget the spears, though. 

"Oh yeah. Also, the moment you see a stimpack or med-x, just jam it into me." She swings the machete in her hand a few times, getting used to the weight. This isn't her wheelhouse, but oh well! You can't have it all. There's something wet rolling down the side of her face, but that's okay. Joshua already said her eyeball hadn't popped, so it's probably blood or tears, and she can deal with them later. "Come on. Let's fuck 'em up." 

"Lead the way," Joshua says, and with a grin, she heads out the door first, already swinging the moment it opens. She slams the machete into the idiot standing guard outside. It's not a very clean death. But that's his fault, isn't it? She's not really a knife person, even when it's a big knife. Guns and energy weapons, that's her bread and butter. If they'd let her keep her guns, she would have made this clean and quick. Instead, he gets this. Bet he wishes now she had her holorifle, what with the screaming and blood everywhere, and the noise it makes when she tears the machete back out of his body.

She's going to make everyone here wish she had a fucking gun. 

She and Joshua fall into a good steady partnership. There's not much time for thinking or anything. They tear through the camp together, Joshua taking a gun off the second guy they kill and providing cover for Courier while she rushes ex-legion-idiots and slams the machete into their throats. Blood gets in her eyes, and she blinks through it, ignoring how how sticky it is. What's it going to do, make things even redder than they are? Big deal. There's an alarm going up but it's too late for them. She hears the crack of gunshots and doesn't take time to think about it or what it means. Joshua's got her back. She's got the ones in front of her, and she makes sure to take them down.

Her machete sticks in the neck of one, and pulling can't dislodge it from the spinal cord. That's her bad. But hey! It's fine! Because right in front of them is the storeroom! A guy with a spear's in the way and she dodges it, then charges in, slamming her whole weight into him. He tips back, and her hands claw at his face, pulling at his flesh. She hears the screaming get high and shrill, and terrified, and her fingers feel warm, wet water around them- hey! So that's what a popped eyeball feels like! Good thing it's not happening to her! 

She leaves him screaming on the floor. Joshua shoots him in the face to finish him and she deals with the lock. Her hands comb through her hair, digging out one of the dozen bobbypins she's got stuck in here, hidden away for a situation just like this. She drops to the ground, closes her eyes as she slides the pin in, and starts picking the lock by feel. It's easier than looking through a film of red. That's just an unhelpful reminder that she needs to take care of her eye. 

Wow, she really, really needs that med-x. But! She'll get it soon! It's probably on the other side of this door! Just think positive and don't linger on the idea that maybe one of them took it all. 

The first pin snaps and she discards it, quickly picking up where she left off. Come on, come on... 

The second works. The door swings open to reveal a very surprised looking idiot. Courier surges up and forward, tackling him before he can draw his gun. They hit the ground hard. Joshua comes in behind her. "Go right." 

She jerks her head to the right. Joshua shoots this one in the face too. This time, she gets a little splattered with blood, and her ears ring from the close-quarters gunshot. But he's down for the count - turns out his skull wasn't nearly as bulletproof as hers. She gets up and looks around, wiping blood out of her good eye. 

And there's her stuff! Looks like they didn't have much time to dig through her bag because when she opens her pack, her things are there. And most importantly, there's all the drugs. She grabs the med-x first and fights through the way her fingers are trembling. The pain ramps up in the moment that her body understands it's finally about to get a dose and can stop holding it off. Which is very annoying because it just makes it harder to get the injection into her elbow. 

The relief is near-instantaneous. Courier just closes both eyes, trusting Joshua to watch her back as she feels the beautiful, beautiful numbing run all through her. That's the stuff. That's what she needed... 

"Courier." A reminder that she can't stand there and let it soothe her all day. She nods, and opens her eyes again, digging out her stimpak. She picks the fleshiest bit of her face and injects straight into it. There's the usual tingling and then that weird itching sensation that spreads out as it starts working. She doesn't feel anything anymore, except that nice, warm glow. The pain quiets down and the red starts to slowly retreat, replaced with a blurry version of her usual vision. 

"Whoof! Alright." Once she can see out of her eye again (sorta), she blinks a few times to clear it of any debris left behind from the healing process. She drags her bag of weapons out, dropping it in front of Joshua. "Grab what you want!" 

Courier takes her holorifle, of course. Joshua goes through it and grabs a second gun. And while he does that, Courier gets a couple of turbos ready in her pockets and then puts the bag back on. They could leave now, take the Transportalponder out of here and get to Big MT and do some real healing in the AutoDoc. 

But she's not going anywhere until this last ragged bit of the Legion is gone. They're too dangerous, and they need to be stopped. And if they've gone out of their way to chase down Joshua, then they really need to be wiped out. Courier's not sure if they grabbed him to execute him, or if they grabbed him because they think somehow they're going to rebuild the Legion with one of its first members. Either way, that's bad news. 

"Ready?" she asks. 

"Forward." Joshua leads the way and she follows quickly behind. 

In the end, they're no match for them. It's almost unfair. These guys are clearly the dredges of the Legion, some far-off unit not fit for combat in the Mojave who probably spent their days in Arizona killing raiders high out of their minds on chems. They had to get the drop on Courier while she was sleeping, and on Joshua while he made a peaceful trip to his people. One day, maybe people will understand that when they say that the Courier beat three armies, she kinda maybe sorta had a little to do with that victory, and that fucking with her is a bad idea. 

Maybe. Probably not. It's been a year since Hoover Dam and idiots continue to throw themselves in her path, as if desperately seeking for her rifle to liberate them from this planet. But hey, if they're that desperate to get off of it, and they're a huge piece of shit, she'll oblige them. Joshua seems to feel the same, and together the two of them tear through the remaining dredges, leaving behind bodies and piles of ashes. Courier doesn't bother stopping to look at any of 'em since she's found exactly nothing useful on the first thousand she killed, and she doubts she'll find anything useful on the next thousand either. 

The only tough bit comes when an asshole with two power fists nearly gets the drop on her, bursting out a door directly in front of Courier and taking a swing at them both. Joshua takes a hit to the shoulder, twisting just in time to keep from getting nailed in the chest, and Courier drops to her knees to avoid the fist aimed at her, bringing her gun up. The shot is awkward but she blasts him in the chest and staggers him, and that gives her time to quickly flop onto her back and roll away, getting up about ten feet back and pumping another two rounds into him. She reloads and Joshua brings around the arm Mr. Power-Fister didn't hit, firing four shots with a ruthless precision. The armour soaks up most of it, but there's a spurt of blood as one gets through, and then Joshua's quickly stepping back to avoid another swing. He brings his other arm up, even as she can see him straining to control it, and snaps off a few more shots with that gun. It's the distraction Courier needs, and soon as she slaps that new cell in place, she squeezes off three shots, slamming all three into Mr Power-Fister's skull. It pops just like an overripe barrel cactus fruit, squirting everywhere. 

Courier reloads and gets to her feet, walking over to check the body. She prods it with her foot and grins at Joshua. "Want a stimpak?" 

He carefully rotates his shoulder, clearly feeling out how it is. He shakes his head. "No. They don't work. I still have a few painkillers you made me. I can take those if I must." 

"Oh, right! Well don't worry, you can save those and the Auto-Doc will deal with it." She hangs the rifle over her back and crouches down to pat down the fister, since he's the one most likely to have anything useful. And he does - among the coins and the usual bitter powders, she finds a scrap of paper with instructions on it. Courier squats as she reads it, and laughs as she realizes halfway through that she knows the handwriting. "Oh wow, look!" 

Joshua tucks a pistol into his belt and takes the note to read. His eyebrows furrow, and then rise as he makes the same realization as her. "Orders from Vulpes Inculta. Seems that even now, the Frumentarii are hard at work undermining and scheming." 

"Or their ghosts are." She grins as she stands up, dusting herself off. "Because Vulpes is real dead. I shot him in the face and stole his dog hat." 

Joshua pauses. Courier just grins, and it only get bigger as she sees his head duck a little, clearly trying to control his reaction to the news. "Of course you did." 

"It was great. I was just trying to get to Vegas to deal with Benny, because he shot me in the head, and I was pretty pissed about it and ended up going through Nipton. He'd just killed and crucified most of the town, and started telling me about the Legion and to spread the word and-" She makes a circular hand-motion to convey the rest. Courier takes the note back and folds it up, tucking it in her pocket. "So I shot him. It was probably really dumb of me and I should have let him walk away. But I didn't." 

The town had been on fire, and the manic look on the lottery winner had unsettled her, and then the men on their crucifixes, dying in slow agony. And that smug pinheaded bastard demanding that she tell people about what they did to Nipton to make it easier for the Legion to roll over the Mojave? Well. Yeah, okay, it was dumb, and the smart choice would have been to look away and carry the message. But what would that have said? That he was right? Or that she was his to order around? The Courier was on her way to teach Benny why you make sure somebody's dead when you shoot 'em, but that was the first real time she put that on the backburner to teach someone who really needed a fucking lesson in the dangers of bragging to any stranger you came across. That had been the first fight she had been at a disadvantage for in every single way and had still come out on top. 

She took his hat, and she left him to rot in the sun, and the only regret she ever had was when she found Camp Searchlight and realized that she really, really should have made it a little less quick for him. But hey, dead's dead. 

Except in her case, where dead wasn't dead after all. 

"Vulpes was a dangerous man. I imagine there are people alive and free now who would be otherwise if you hadn't intervened." Joshua carefully rotates his arm again, and tucks his other pistol away as well. "Do you have your teleporter on you?" 

"Yes, let me grab it." Courier drops her bag and digs it out, showing it to him. She hands it to Joshua to hold onto while she does the bag back up and slings it on her shoulders. "We'll get Auto-Doc to fix us. And I'm giving you an escort up to your home." 

"I'm not certain I need one, even with the trouble we encountered here." He looks over the bodies. It's true, half of them are his kills. Courier nods, because it's true. But as she waits, she can see some of Joshua's usual hardness resolve into something else. "But if you have nowhere else to be, the company would be welcome. Daniel and I had planned to travel together before the way things shook out."

"Do you think he made it back okay?" It's hard to tell. People go on trips, and you don't hear from them, and maybe sometimes you never do again. All you can do is hope and trust that the roads are clear.

"I have no reason to think he wouldn't have. We'll find out, when we reach my people." Joshua hands her the Transportalponder back soon as she stands back up, bag over her shoulder again. She locks arms and takes it, and she's quietly pleased that she doesn't even have to worry about making sure not to grab him too tightly or in the wrong way. She can just grab on tight and pull the trigger-

... uhhhh. Huh. She tries again. The trigger pulls, but nothing happens. She holds it up to peer at it with her good eye. It does look a little... cracked. Maybe something happened when Legion caught her and drug her out here. Well then. Hmm. "Okay. New plan. I need to pull this apart and fix it. And to do that, I'm going to need somewhere not crawling with Legion." 

They could go back to that main building, but frankly, Courier doesn't want to linger around for a patrol to come back. Not that charging out to find more danger is a great plan, but she'd rather deal with some angry molerats than more I-can't-believe-it's-not-the-Legion. 

Joshua looks around and after a moment or two of thinking, he nods for them to head northernly. "Should be places along the river we can stop and rest in peace."

"Good!" She repacks her things in and gets moving with him, hoping to cover ground before the med-x wears off and she needs a rest. 

\---

Within three hours, they find a place to set up for the night, one of the old trading posts along the road from the ancient times. It's got two doors and they just barricade them both, setting up in the main shop. Courier takes her second dose and Joshua finally takes some of his painkillers, and with the both of them without the fuzz of pain blurring their thinking, Courier can help Joshua with his arm. 

The break's clean at least, judging from what she can feel. Joshua barely reacts as her fingers probe his broken arm, making sure everything's lined up in place. Then again, what's a broken arm after years of burning day and night? His pain tolerance is staggering. Courier always figured she was a hardass, but anytime she's with Joshua, she remembers what it's like to be around someone who really knows how to take an absolutely unrelenting amount of pain and keep moving. 

The sling isn't anything fancy, but it'll hold his arm tight to his body and keep his bones lined up until they can get the Transportalponder working again. Then they switch and it's Courier's turn to hold still as Joshua does his best to take a look at her eye and the bone around it. Fuck it hurts, and that's through the med-x. She does her best to be quiet, but... she can't.

"Sorry," she mutters after another of those awkward, low groans of pain. 

"No need to be." Joshua doesn't stop, which is good. The quicker he does this, the easier it'll be. "If it helps ease the pain and keeps you still, then it is good." 

"You don't make much noise." Courier points out. Seems like he figured out a way to deal with it without needing to make noise every ten seconds. 

"I did in the beginning. I expect I babbled like a brook with how the sounds of agony fell from me, and how I cursed every living thing I could think of, and then I cursed the land itself." Joshua's voice is almost hypnotic. He just keeps on speaking steadily as his hands stays on Courier's face, pressing as he adjusts the bones. Though it hurts, it makes it easier to focus on him and the words he's saying. "But in time, even sound was not enough to ease my pain. That was when I turned to prayer and found salvation once more." 

It's what she expected. Joshua's never spoken all that much about it beyond the basis of how he came to be with his people, rather than how he managed to survive as a man eternally burning when a bullet was always there and always free. "What's your book say that helps?" 

"Many things, depending on what it is you need to hear. 'We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering makes endurance, and endurance makes character, and character makes hope, and hope does not put us to shame’." Joshua presses and Courier's vision blacks out for a moment. When itcomes back, she's breathing hard, but her vision clears up a little. Joshua gives her a slight smile. "Better?" 

"Fuck, that hurt." But she nods after a moment. "Yes, I can see." 

"Good." He drops his hand from her face. "We should rest, and begin our work in the morning." 

"Absolutely. I'll take first watch, see if I can pull the Transportalponder apart and figure out what's gone wrong." If she does, maybe she can fix it and they can get out of here and to Big MT before the day is over. She settles her back against the counter and takes a breath. Joshua nods and grabs a bottle of water from his pack, having a drink of it. "... that thing you said, that's what I needed to hear? I liked it. I think it's right. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." 

"You seem to be living proof as such," he says, as if he's not the poster child for surviving being set on fire and thrown off the Grand Canyon. 

"What did you need to hear, then?" She crosses her legs and drags her pack in front of her. "Not kind words. Everything you said has a gunpowder taste to it."

"No, not kind words." His eyes go a little distant for a moment and she leans in, waiting to hear what they are. "'Lord, why is my pain unending, and my wound forever raw? Why must you be like a deceptive brook, like a spring that yields nothing?' And the Lord spoke, and He said, 'If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me. If you speak only true and worthy words, you will be my voice. I will make you a wall to your people, forged bronze and unbending.'"

It's nice. It's very Joshua. "I like the last part. A wall to your people." 

"I have always taken comfort in them, even in the hardest of times." And she can see for a moment the faint flicker of grief and guilt. It's weird, seeing emotions on his face. It's still weird seeing his face at all. Nice too though, because it's easier to read him. It's a little intimate too, and she's not sure if that's bad or good, or neither, and it just is what it is. 

"Did you believe in them when you were with Caesar? That you were being a wall then too?" She leans against the pack in her lap now, curious to know. 

"I did." And, already guessing at her next question, he answers her. "Written words hold power in them, but they have no defenses against being misread. Our desires can pervert the meaning so easily, and leave us with a mirror that reflects only what we wish to see. I was not the first to do so. I will not be the last." 

Courier thinks of the letter from Vulpes Inculta, the orders to seize all profligates and to make an example of them. There wasn't a Legion, and Caesar is dead and lies rotting in the sun, and all their legions are scattered and smashed. But the words of a dead man could still convince this group to continue their work, even if there was no one left to see it. 

"You can't ever be sure you're reading them right, then?" Courier asks and gets a nods from Joshua. "But you're sure this is closer to right than it was before?" 

"With every fiber of my being," Joshua says, and settles against the wall, getting ready to sleep sitting up. "The meaning of the words can be twisted, and intent made something other than what it was. But the covenant made between myself and God remained the same, no matter how I insisted the conditions had changed." 

"Covenant?" The word niggles at her brain, wiggling some. Familiar but not familiar. She's heard it before. Has he said it? Oh, yes, he has. "Oh, the contract!" 

He seems faintly amused. "Of a sense." 

"You know, I was reading old world books, and they had people whose entire job it was to argue about contracts." Courier grins. "If you broke a contract, you'd go to a court and they'd decide the punishment." 

"They still do that, in places where laws are agreed upon. They're called lawyers. We had some in New Canaan, and I saw others during my travels as a young man. As long as people need things from each other, and have no desire to take them by force, lawyers and contracts will exist." 

"Every contract I've had was just an agreement where nobody could really hold the other to any side of it," Courier tells him, and her eyes drop down to his hands. It's probably good Joshua doesn't talk much with them, because with one strapped to his body, he wouldn't be able to gesture much. "A couple of them tried to get out of their end of it, and you can guess how that ended." 

"Yes, I imagine they regretted their choices." He glances at her. Courier grins big so he knows exactly how much they did. "I'm sure you've seen a few written contracts. You're friends with the Kings, aren't you? They have a kind of contract they offer people." 

Courier racks her brain. The Kings? They had jobs for her, sure, but those were all agreements, same as any other jobs. And those jobs were for her, not anybody else-

"Oh! The marriages?" Because that did have a piece of paper, and people were signing it. She laughs as it hits her. "Oh, that is a contract, isn't it?" 

"One of the oldest we have. As we all have a covenant between ourselves and our God, many of us have a covenant between us and those we love. My people keep those old ways." And, before she can ask, he anticipates her question. "I've never been married." 

"You think you ever will be?" She's got her own questions about who she was before, and what that woman was like. Was she married? Did she have someone? Courier's never met anyone who knew her face, beyond Ulysses, and he was a man driven half-mad by his own grief who badly wanted to place all his troubles on her head. 

"No, marriage isn't something I was meant for," Joshua says, and with a gentle hand, turns the conversation away from it. Clearly it's something he doesn't want to linger on much. "What was the agreement between you and the machine that runs Vegas?" 

"Oh, that was us going in the same direction, not a contract at all. I guess I must have had a contract with Mr. House, but he had that with whoever I used to be, before I got shot in the head. So I don't know if that counts? At any rate, most of my work was for hire. Go here. Find this. Bring it back. Or don't, and kill whatever's there. Then get a reward of caps or a gun or something like that." She traces out the steps on her pack, as if charting the space she traveled on a map. "Maybe once Yes Man's done his upgrading, there'll be some of that. I'm still not sure how it all works, if the casino is mine, or if it's his, and if he works for me or I work for him. Or maybe we're just friends now? I suppose the real question is if you can be friends with a machine, which I think is a yes, though maybe a better question is 'can I be friends with Yes Man and did it count if we were friends when he couldn't say no?'" 

Joshua looks genuinely amused. The side of his mouth has ticked up into a slight smile and his eyes are crinkled - oh, he's got crow's feet! Courier can't help but grin to herself when she sees it. God but he's got a kind of handsome air to him when he's smiling. "I suppose you'll know once you speak with him again. For my part, I have never intimately known a machine with a mind, and can't say if it's real or an accurate simulation." 

"I think it might be both. I mean, what are we if we're not just simulating sometimes? Half of the time, I'm listening to other people's conversations to figure out what the trick to them is." Courier's better at it now, a lot sharper, but she still has moments when she feels like she already knows everything she could say and it’s all laid out in front of her, and she's not sure what's the best one to say to get what she wants - and does everyone else spend their time doing the same thing or not? "The only real difference, I think, is that a lot of robots can't do it nearly as well as us, because we didn't give them enough of a brain to think with. If we did, that would really change things."

Joshua shakes his head a little, still amused with her. He's got that look in his eye, like there's a joke here she's not aware of. But he's not sharing, so after a moment, she goes ahead and stretches a leg out to prod him with her boot. He just raises an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"You're laughing at something and not telling me what's really funny." Courier gives him another prod. "So go on, explain." 

"I'd rather not. If I start, we'll both be awake all night talking about souls, and I'm feeling very tired right now." And now that she's paying attention again, yeah, she can see it. A broken arm takes a lot out of a person. 

"Oh sure, go rest up. I'll keep the chatter low. Sleep well, Joshua." She gives him another tap and then finishes laying out her Transportalponder to take it apart. Courier makes herself quiet as she goes through it. Joshua does the same, and the next time she looks up to glance at him, he's fallen asleep.

She watches for a little while, looking at how blank and peaceful his face is when he's asleep. Courier still wants to kiss him, maybe even more so now than when she last saw him. But she has no idea how to bridge that gap, to figure out if he's been thinking about it too or not. Taking on the Legion was easy compared to this, but then, she didn't have much choice there, did she? It's not like she could have turned a blind eye to them and hoped for someone else to sort it out. She took on the Legion because she had to, because their version of the future involved her turned into a slave and spending her nights in fear of when the tent flap would open and men would enter. Fighting for her own survival is easy. 

If she never kisses Joshua, there's nothing that will be lost. Maybe she'll never have more, but she won't have less if they carry on like this. But she could stand to lose a lot if she charges in too fast and he turns away from her. She treasures this friendship. Courier loves their conversations, and she respects and appreciates him, and maybe more than all of that, she feels like he understands her. When they talk, he's never truly surprised by what she says. He gets her. And she cares about all of her friends, but there are so many times she feels like they don't really understand. They try, they do, and some of them come close to it. Some have bits of it. The closest that comes to it is Boone, since he knows what it's like to have nothing and to be so reckless with your life that you keep finding yourself alive at the end of things that should have left you dead. But he hates himself in a way that Courier can't imagine. She likes who she is, and she likes herself, and she likes her choices. There are no regrets in her past. There's just... nothing. She's untethered. Lily knows that. Awww, she misses Lily. 

When this is all over, she's going to go pay Lily a visit again. And maybe this time, she can convince Joshua to come with her.


	2. Chapter 2

They trade in the night twice, each of them getting a few hours before taking over and then switching again. Normally she'd sleep through the night and risk it, but she doesn't want to now, not with the not-Legion possibly still roaming around. Easier and safer then to go without a few hours of sleep in order to stay sharp. By the time dawn's come up, she's gotten a hotplate going and is making coffee on it for the both of them.

She also has an answer for what's gone wrong with the Transportalponder, and she tells Joshua as she offers him a cup. "They must have been handling it rough, because they broke the connectors. I need new parts, mostly an electronic board I think, and probably a soldering gun. I can make do with the hot plate in a pinch though. So, we need to do a little scavenging and find something I can use for repairs." 

"I'm certain we can find plenty along our path. This area is less fertile than others, and most of those who travel it don't spend their time scavenging among the ruins. And if we can't, then I'm sure we can find something when we reach my people." Joshua sips his coffee, and Courier blows on hers a few times before having another sip. It's very hot. It tastes good and feels warm, filling her up in the best way. 

"There's always something somewhere. That's the one thing you can rely on." She grins and gives the top of her coffee another good blow. Courier's not sure it actually cools it down, but it feels like it's doing something. Sometimes, you do things for the ritual of it and no other reason. It feels good. It's like scratching your back, but you're scratching your brain instead. Huh. She could have done that when her brain was removed. But she's got the feeling that it would have hated that and been pretty choked about her digging a finger into all that soft pink. Probably wouldn't have been good for her anyway, since she's pretty sure the bullet in her skull also wasn't good. 

They sip their coffee in a little silence together, Joshua quiet and deep in thought, while Courier lets her brain rattle on in her skull. She'll spend enough of the day chewing on Joshua's ears that she'll try to give him a break for the moment. He doesn't strike her as someone who talks much, except when she's talking to him. It's got to be a little exhausting to have her with you. Courier’s companions always look tired after a long day with her. Except Veronica. She talks as much as Courier does, and she always looks energized after a whole day of conversation. Boone looks like he wants to crawl into a hole and never speak to anyone ever again. 

Courier wonders what Joshua would think of Boone. She already knows what Boone thinks about Joshua, but it's a little curious to think about it the other way around. His feelings about the Legion are a little muckier than her own, which is understandable, but he's always kept his opinions on the NCR close to his chest. Is it easy to let go of the hate you felt when you fought bitterly against a foe that later turned out to be the good guys after all? Or- well, good guys is still a stretch, Courier won't forget the shit they were pulling on the Strip anytime soon or what they did to the Khans. But they weren't the bad guys here. 

Maybe it's easier just to not think about it at all, and to focus on yourself, and what you can change. Still. If it wouldn't end up with Boone drawing a gun on Joshua, she'd like to hear them talk. They're alike and not alike in equal ways. 

"How is your eye?" Joshua shakes her out of her dreaming and she brings her head up. It's a good question and she switches her coffee to her other hand, reaching up to touch the socket. The pain's there, but... not so bad.

"Healing. I can see out of it mostly, and the pain's alright." She's tempted to keep wiggling until she hears it crunch, but that's stupid when she's got no easy access to the Auto-Doc. Courier makes herself lower her hand and she resists the urge to raise it back up again. "How's your arm?" 

"Sore and stiff, but there's still good circulation to my fingers." And from the splint, he pokes out two fingers and wiggles them slightly. They do look very pink still, which is good. Courier grins. Looks like she's still got it when setting broken things. 

"Pain manageable?" she asks, and he just gives her a wry look. Courier shrugs and grins. "I know you can stand it, but I wanted to be polite. You have more of those painkillers left, at least another dose or two." 

"It's painful, but perfectly tolerable. Painkillers are best saved for when I need them, not when I want them." And he hands Courier his cup before he stands up, moving slow and careful. She lets him handle himself for now, and when he's up, she gets up too, finishing off both cups and then packing everything away. Within five minutes, they're packed and out of the shelter and back into the wilderness. She's feeling a little jittery as the caffeine starts spreading through her but she's also excited. This is kind of a pain in the ass, but she's excited to spend time with Joshua again. Especially since as much as she likes to think about dragging him with her to see new things, she knows he won't come with her. And that's okay, she gets it. He's got things to do beyond follow her on wild adventures all over the plains to Hell and back. 

Especially when her adventures involve a lot of "I saw a neat thing and now I'm going to find out what's there and possibly fight everything between me and it." Arcade's told her that she's exhausting when she's like this, like constantly following a magpie that flits from shiny thing to shiny thing. Which is fair, because sometimes she is. It's just that there's so much to see and do, and the world is big and wide open, and why wouldn't you try solve the mysteries in front of you? Those are the best part of living. 

She looks up and spots something lying up ahead, and true to form, she finds herself drawn to it, already adjusting her course slightly. It's got a huge antenna attached to it, like the radio stations she's seen around, and a building near the bottom. Courier's already flipping her radio on, quickly scanning through the frequency to see if she can pick it up. "What's that do you think? Radio station out here?"

Joshua looks where she is. "It looks like one. I don't recall anything ever broadcasting this far out." 

Courier's seeking finds nothing but static. Whatever it is, it's not currently broadcasting. She just grins at him. "Let's go there. Might have what I need. Or other things. Like a mystery to solve." 

Joshua looks amused by her, which she understands. It probably is pretty funny. He doesn't steer her off though, just correcting his course alongside hers as they head away from the river banks and towards the antenna a distance away. "It might be a numbers station. We encountered a few of them when pushing into Arizona." 

"What are they? Automated shortwave?" She's encountered enough of them here and there when wandering. 

"A form of it. Most are operating on a dead man's switch and have been broadcasting since the War. They repeat numbers, over and over again. We think they were for military use, likely troop movements, or final instructions. It may be that this one's switch never triggered, or it fell into disrepair over time." He easily keeps up with her, even with the broken arm, and they move from easier terrain to harder stuff. 

"Well, that means it'll have electronics for sure then." And if it is a numbers station or something like it, then a mystery to figure out. Either why it never turned on, or why it turned off. 

"They might. It may have been looted a long time ago," Joshua cautions her, even as they both turn towards it. It's an easy decision to make. It's still along the path they're taking, it's not that out of the way, and it's worth checking out. Very few things are ever fully looted clean out here. Plus-

"If we can make it work, I can send out my own broadcast. I told Yes Man to listen for me." Courier can't help but laugh at her own joke, even before she manages to tell it to Joshua. "I found a joke book while rooting around, so I keep sending him jokes. He hates it." 

Joshua just shakes his head, but she can see the glint in his eye that tells her that he finds it funny. "He must treasure your friendship." 

"He loves me." It's true. Yes Man is probably her closest friend, and she's absolutely his. This isn't to say that she doesn't care for the rest of her companions, because she does. They're all fantastic in their own ways. But she and Yes Man click in a way that she hasn't with anyone else. He gets her, and she gets him. They make excellent partners keeping the Mojave safe. In a way, you could call them rulers, but that's not right. Mr. House wanted to rule. Caesar wanted to rule. Kimball wanted to rule. Courier wants to remain the way she is right now: invisible and working on the ground. It's the same for Yes Man, who stays in the Lucky 38 and runs Vegas so invisibly that only Courier's closest companions know his name. 

They're both just doing what's right. And what's right is keeping the Mojave safe. Part of that means making sure that the NCR stays within their own borders - and that the Legion gets snuffed out entirely. They're not exactly someone who can be negotiated with or who are willing to compromise. The NCR isn't actively evil, just sort of unthinkingly malicious the way that any large bureaucracy can be. But the Legion requires a world with slaves, and decimation and rape, and an empire built on a backbone of human suffering. 

So they have to go. The end! Full stop! 

The climb to the antenna isn't too bad. The ground here is solid enough instead of crumbly, and though there are some steep slopes, they're easier to climb with two. You can tell that they're still in more mountainous terrain because of all the yao guai trundling around. Courier and Joshua avoid most of them, since it's a fight that isn't really worth having. It's like a Deathclaw, y'know, yeah you can hunt them down and kill them, but if they're not in a populated area that needs pest control, you're better off ignoring them. It's not worth the effort and the rewards are middling. 

"What are you going to do when you reach your people?" Courier's curious, and the more they walk, the more she wonders. "Do you think you'll hug them?"

"I think that's unlikely. I've never been one for physical affection. I expect we'll exchange handshakes and catch up on the news. Do you mind grabbing my flask?" He stops and turns his pack towards her. 

"Oh, sure." Courier digs it out and unscrews the top before passing it to Joshua. He takes a long drink, then offers it to her in return. She happily accepts it. The water's warm and kind of metallic tasting. 

Joshua continues. "There will undoubtedly be questions about my appearance." 

"Do you know what you're going to tell them?" Courier screws the lid back on and tucks the flask back. "Do they know what an auto-doc is?" 

"They'll grasp the idea of a mechanical doctor easily enough. I'll tell them the truth." And he nods to her as they carry on up the slope. "A friend showed me a great kindness that I can never repay." 

"You don't need to repay anything. Just keep doing good. Or, if you give me 50 bottlecaps, that's about what I usually get paid for this stuff. On average." Courier waggles her hand when Joshua gives her a look. "It's what it evens out to. People pay you in whatever they can. For a lot of people, that's whatever they have on hand. Sometimes it's just 'thanks'. Sometimes I'm lucky, and they've got something unique, like a recipe or a neat weapon, or a map of somewhere new. Anyway, the people who can pay the most money usually aren't the people I want to work for." 

When she glances over at him, he's smiling at her. Courier feels her heart beat in her chest, like a raven caught in a bag. She clicks her tongue at him and keeps pressing on before her cheeks can colour any. 

"The first thing I'll do when I reach my people is go to church," Joshua says. 

"Will they have one there?" Courier's seen the buildings here and there across the wasteland. Most are in the same poor shape every other building is in, but she's seen a few that people have kept up. 

"They will. If they don't have a building, they'll have a tent. You carry faith with you, and wherever you go, you can make a place of worship." He pauses as the path they're climbing gets a little loose, pebbles rolling out of the earth. Without discussion, they both start heading further right, towards a firmer looking slope. "I've enjoyed my time among the Dead Horses, but I look forward to worshiping once again with the New Canaanites." 

Courier nods. She doesn't understand, but she does at the same time. It must feel like a relief, the way that going back to Big MT feels to Courier after a long time surrounded by people. "Do you think there will be a welcome dinner, like in the one story from your book?" 

It takes Joshua a moment to realize what she's asking, and apparently it's funny enough to get a laugh from him. "Not quite the same, but yes, I expect there will be a meal of some kind. I'm sure you'll have a chance to try something new to eat." 

"Oh, I'm invited now?" Courier just beams, excited at the thought of getting to see so many other New Canaanites and to taste their dishes. 

"You're always welcome wherever I am," Joshua says, and Courier's heart is light in her chest the rest of the climb. 

The radio station is locked tight, but that's nothing half a dozen lockpicks can't fix. Joshua rests on an empty oil drum sitting outside the station, watching her pick at it. When it finally opens, Courier stands and draws her weapon, waiting for Joshua to do the same. You can never be sure what's inside of anywhere, even if the door's locked. 

In this case, the answer is: a dead ghoul. Or that's what it looks like at least. The room makes a weird noise when the door opens, and she feels a breeze for a moment, but only a little bit. Then it stops dead. There's a body still sitting in the chair and when Courier gets a closer look, a surge of excitement runs through her as it all becomes clear. "Oh! I thought he was a dead ghoul, but he's not. Look at him." 

He's dried out like a ghoul, but it's different. The skin's gone tight and the eyes and other super soft bits are gone, but otherwise he looks like he must have died two hundred years ago when the bombs fell. Even the clothes haven't rotted away. There's dried dark stains on them in places, but it looks like he just up and died, and then the world forgot to rot him. 

Joshua looks at the corpse, and he's got an answer. "He was mummified." 

"Yeah? Neat." Courier pulls on an arm to see if she can lift him out of the chair. He mostly makes crunching noises and looks like he might flake, so she just pulls the chair out instead. Courier parks it by the door, out in the sun, and gives the corpse a pat on the back before heading in again. "How'd that happen?"

"When the air is the right kind of dry, or there's not much air flow, the body decomposes differently." Joshua's knelt down where the chair was, checking the equipment. "I read about it, long ago. The Followers might know more."

"I'll have to bug Arcade about it." Courier comes over to join Joshua and help him out. She gets her electronic board out of one of the radio's bits, though she'll still have to come up with something for a soldering gun. There's lots of wires, but no power source for anything. All the batteries are long since dead, covered in white crusty bits. She sighs, wrapping and packing up the rest. "Never a battery when you need one. And they're so heavy, I hate carrying them around when I'm on a long trip." 

Joshua doesn't say much, but the way he hums under his breath is an obvious agreement. He sits up on the broadcasting table, resting for a moment while Courier goes back to poking around. "There should be some with my people. And if not, then we'll likely find a caravanner with a merchant." 

"I hope so. Maybe we'll get lucky and find a settlement or two along the way." There's fewer of them out here, or fewer with people in them. The Legion came through and wiped out so many tiny towns. She sometimes thinks of Dale Barton, looking her in the eyes and telling her how safe Arizona was. 

Courier was playing nice then so she could get access to the vault, so she just smiled and didn't smash his face in. He must have seen the look in her eyes, because he shut up about how great the Legion was after that, and by the time she started killing her way through the Fort, he was gone. Shame. She really wanted him to run that by her again, now that she didn't have an armed escort following her around. Maybe she'll run into him up here in the wild, peddling his wares to we-swear-we're-the-Legion. 

"Does your god have a problem with spitting on people?" Courier asks, somewhat curious. 

Joshua raises his eyebrows - and it's novel that he has them now. Is it novel for him too that he can do that? She hopes so. "Do you often spit on people?"

"It happens a lot less often than you'd think with me. I guess I almost never end up in that place, since if someone seems like the kind of person I'd want to end up spitting on, I don't usually keep talking to them. Or usually they're way worse than that, so my first instinct is to go for my rifle." She reaches up behind herself to give the holorifle on her back a pat. Good ol' trusty holorifle. Nothing more satisfying than making someone crumble into ashy bits with a blast of hard light. "I usually don't end up needing to split the difference. But I was thinking about Dale Barton. I don't necessarily want to kill him, but I do want to spit on him." 

"What did Dale Barton do?" 

"I met him at the Fort. He was selling goods to the Legion." Courier holds up a finger, because she can see Joshua assuming that it's about selling to the Legion - and it is, but it isn't. "He told me that the Legion made Arizona safer for merchants." 

"The Legion brought order to many places without it. For some, that's safety." He doesn't have to say what the cost of that order was. They both know it. "But that's a curious question. God says to us that sin is willful wrongdoing. A conscious choice must be made to ignore what we know to be right, and to choose a path or action that brings about harm, be it physical or spiritual." 

Courier thinks it over. She's not sure that spitting is wrongdoing in her mind. It seems like a kinder choice. It's disrespectful, but it's not deadly or harmful in a physical sense. It's just a way of making sure Barton knows the contempt she has for him and his fucking safety. 

"I'd say it's not wrongdoing. But I like that test. A sin's knowing the right choice and ignoring it." She finds it rings true to her in the way that a lot of his faith does. It's funny though, because she feels certain that Joshua's god isn't real. Courier's seen a lot of things all over the wasteland, strange things and wonderful things, but she's not seen hide or hair of his god. Mankind's clumsy sticky fingers are everywhere she looks, from the ugly craters carved by their bombs, to the glory and decadence of the old world undone by those same ugly bombs, to the new homes built on and in the ruins. It's all people, all the way up and down. But, religion's people too, isn't it? It's just taking the things people feel and putting them out loud. Joshua's god tells him what sin is. Courier's got a compass in her mind that tells her which way is true and rightful north, and she does her best to head towards it. 

Her truth north tells herself that spitting isn't a sin, and from what Joshua's saying, she's pretty sure his god feels the same. 

Joshua's just looking at her, a curious little smile at the corner of his mouth. She stands in front of him, setting her hands on either side of his knees as he's sat on the desk. She wants to kiss him so badly. "How long until my questions drive you insane?" 

"I doubt that will ever happen. I enjoy talking with you, Courier." Joshua doesn't back off, and he doesn't push her away. He sits straight, and maybe even bends in just a little as he talks. They're probably closer than they should be, but neither of them is backing away. This close, she can see the delicate patchwork of scars over his skin, the remains of the full-body burns that he bore for years and years. 

She could make a joke here. Courier could ask him if it's a sin to have the thoughts she does, if it's doing him wrong to think about him the way she does. She could tell him that she feels the same about the conversations she has with her. Or she could back off and break the moment. Or-

Oh, fuck it. Courier leans in and kisses Joshua. It's the right choice and she knows it the moment he leans in as well. Courier has no memory of kissing anyone before, but she must have done it at least a few times because muscle memory kicks in here. It's slow and sweet, and when he sets his good hand on the back of her neck, it feels right. All of this feels right. What was she so worried about anyway? 

Last night feels a million years away, and this feels like she can have it all - she can have his friendship and more. 

He breaks first, and she has to fight the urge to chase after him as he pulls back. Joshua's hand lies on the back of her neck, his thumb rubbing over her skin. She gives him a smile. "Did you enjoy this too?" 

Joshua's smile is more reserved than hers. Fuck. And she sees the way his eyes look- oh, double fuck. By the time his hand drops back to his lap, she knows that nothing he says is going to be good. "Perhaps more than I should." 

"If you try to tell me this is a bad idea, I'm going to have to sin." Courier tries a joke, and it works because he lets out a shocked laugh. "It's only one after you tell me it's wrong." 

He shakes his head and sighs after a moment, leaning back. Courier wants so badly to keep leaning forward to kiss him again. He felt what she felt, didn't he? It's all so obvious. It's the right choice for them. He wants her too. But he doesn't lean forward, and when the laughter dies off, he just has that serious look on his face. 

"Is it really that bad that we're sweet on each other?" She reaches out to set her hand on his. It's a quiet, intimate touch. "I like you, Joshua." 

"I know you do." He doesn't pull his hand away from her. "You wear your emotions on your sleeve. Comparatively, you've been restrained when it comes to me." 

"You're important to me." It's inadequate but true. Joshua matters to her. She likes him, and she wants him to be happy. She would like them to make each other happy, but she can feel that glimmer of hope sinking by the moment. Courier just keeps her hand on his, rubbing her thumb back and forth. "Tell me why we can't do this. I want an answer." 

"So you can knock them down." Joshua knows her well enough by now, but she gives him a look all the same. 

"Yes!" Courier gives his hand a squeeze. "Whatever the reason is, you know it isn't a real answer. You're just afraid." 

"Of all the things that people have called me, coward was never on the list." He's still dodging. She just keeps her eyes locked with his and doesn't back down. Joshua looks back at her. Neither of them flinch. 

"Tell me." It's not a request anymore. 

"You are God's champion." It shouldn't surprise her by now that he feels this way, but she still feels floored to hear him come out and say it like that, so matter of fact. "I've met thousands of men and women. I've fought beside them, and fought them. I've spoken to so many whose names I've long forgotten. You are unlike any of them. You were touched by His will." 

And he slips out of her grip, bringing his hand up to rest on her head. His thumb rests on the scar on her head. Courier feels her voice tremble as she speaks. "I got my skull blasted open by Benny and my brains scrambled. That wasn't god." 

A ghost of a smile creeps over Joshua's face. "God was with you when you lay in that shallow grave. He speaks to you even now, whispering His will to you. He'll always speak to you, Courier. You were touched by the divine. When I look at you, I see His light burning in your eyes. It'll burn in you as long as you live." 

Her mouth's set in a twist and she wishes it was stern and disapproving, but she knows it must look more like a pout. "You know, I liked it a lot better when you were laughing at me." 

"I know. I'm sorry. I had hoped to never mention any of this to you." He looks so tired for a moment, thumb stroking along the circle scar. "I let my desires get the best of me." 

"I'm just going to remind you that I'm the one who kissed you. You didn't exactly make any moves." Fuck, she sounds so sulky and petulant. Courier tries to take a deep breath and to straighten herself out, but when she speaks, she doesn't exactly sound impressive. "It's not anybody speaking to me. And if it was, then your god probably wouldn't want me to be such a shit." 

He won't laugh at her jokes. He's not mad at them either, though. He just keeps touching her face and looking at her like this. "In all the stories I told you, did I ever make my God sound like a kind one?"

It's stupid, it's so stupid, and the worst part is that she doesn't have a counter for it. Courier figured it might be something like his self-loathing, or feeling like he didn't deserve happiness, or maybe he'd complain about age? He is older than her and even though Courier's not sure of her own age, she does know that it's probably half of his. All of those could be easily gotten around. But how the hell does she push back against this?

"If your god's expecting me to spend my life being chaste, then you're both mistaken." She tries again to get a reaction out of him. But he's like the cold night sky, familiar but inscrutable. "I don't understand." 

"You have a mission. I refuse to stand in its way." And he brings her near, pressing their foreheads together. His skin is warm against hers, and this close, she can see how his eyelashes have grown back. They're so soft and pale. "You need to travel and to do God's will. And you can't do that with the Malpais Legate at your side. I will go back to my people, and you will follow your path." 

"This is bullshit." She's so angry. Courier's always had better words to say before. She's always had the ability to know exactly what to say to win, but she can't find it now. It won't come to her. "What do you think I'd do? Walk you into NCR territory? Try to make people forgive you?" 

Joshua just stays still, his forehead against hers. Then he leans back, and his hand drops to his side. "No. You're too sensible to think I need that. But we both know my very presence would limit the places you can go, or the people who would be willing to speak to you. If I can't travel with you, then you'll try to find a way to stay near to me." 

He's not wrong. But it still makes her angry to hear him talking about her, like she wouldn't be able to figure out a better solution. "Masks exist." 

"Would you have me wear a mask again?" There's no sharpness in his words, but she feels it all the same. Courier looks away. No, she wouldn't. If he wouldn't be willing to wear one, then she won't make him do that.

"We could be good for each other." Courier wants to insist on it, to make him see it from her perspective. But... there's a time and place for persuasion. She knows she can't push any further here. Not yet, anyway. "This isn't done. We're talking more." 

"We have a long walk ahead of us if you can't make a soldering gun. I expect I haven't heard the last of it." Joshua waits for her to move before he scoots forward, sliding off the desk. "We should be on our way if there's nothing else worth taking." 

She wants to kiss him again. Courier wants to put a hand in the middle of his chest and to push him back against the wall and kiss him until he understands things. But that would be the end of it. If a kiss was a bad idea last night, then it's a nightmare now. If she's going to sway him, then she needs to give him space. Courier takes in a deep breath and then lets it out, looking around. 

"Nothing I can use for a soldering gun here." She finally says after an evaluation of the rest of the room. "We'll keep moving. How's the pain?" 

"Tolerable." Knowing his pain threshold, she knows that means it's probably more than most could bear. She really needs to get them out of here and back to the Big MT so his arm can get fixed. And so she can get her eye fixed too. 

"Then we'll get a move on." Courier gets her things together and she steps out with Joshua. The corpse is still waiting out there. She decides to leave him out in the sun. He hasn't felt it in centuries, and it's probably nicer than being shut back up in that airless room. Courier gives his dry head a pat as they walk back and start to make their way back down the slope again.


	3. Chapter 3

The topic remains dropped the rest of the day as they hike their way upriver. Courier's the one who calls a stop to their walking in the late afternoon, when she looks over and sees the way Joshua's colour has gone off. Maybe he doesn't feel pain the same way anymore, but she can tell that part of his body is still reacting to it. 

There's not a perfect place to camp like the night before, so they end up out in the open, by the remains of some long-rotted building. Courier makes a fire and insists Joshua take a med-x. "I know you can't feel it, but you're taking it anyway. You're going to turn green at this point."

"I respect your concern for my well-being, but I've been through worse." Joshua nods to his pack. "I have painkillers for when I need them, but this is ordinary." 

"Well, that's nice, but you're still using it. Don't be stupid, I will hold you down and inject it," Courier threatens. She might just do it too, if he insists on being stupid. 

Joshua seems to consider it too before he finally turns towards her, letting her have access to his broken arm. She picks his shoulder as the injection site, and gets him spiked up with the wonderful powers of med-x. 

"Don't worry, I have fixer on me. I've always got a stack of it." And she pulls out a box of it, tucking it into Joshua's own tackle. Honestly, what would she do without it? Probably be a lot more addicted to chems than she is. As it stands, a fixer every few months sorts her out so she can focus on things other than when the next hit of turbo will be. And what will she do if she ever runs out of fixer? Go cold turkey, she supposes. The last thing she wants is to end up like Jacob Hoff, spending her days waiting for a fix. 

Joshua just hmms to himself at the offer of fixer. He carefully settles himself with his back against the remains of the crumbling building, letting his head rest against the wall. Courier disassembles the injector and keeps the component bits so she can reuse them or sell them back. Then it's her turn to sit beside him, taking her rifle off her back and setting it by her leg. 

"So, God filled me up with fire," she says, because she's been thinking while they were walking. "God filled me to the eyeballs with gasoline and lit a match. And he did the same with you. And us meeting was your God's work too. But God doesn't want us to be together." 

"I don't claim to know God's desires. I only know His hand when I see it." Joshua easily sidesteps her argument. As much as she loves how smart he is, she also absolutely hates it right now. 

"Pretty convenient that you see it when you want and not when I want you to," Courier gripes, and Joshua smiles ever so slightly at the remark. "Well, what would it take? God talking to you directly? Waking up to him standing in front of you and wagging his finger?" 

"The Lord will guide me to where I'm meant to be. He always has." Another not-answer. He looks at her. "Just as the Lord guides you where you're meant to be." 

"Just wait, he's going to have us walking side by side for the rest of time, and then you're going to feel dumb." Courier brings her knees up to press against her chest. 

"I can think of nothing I would enjoy more than spending a life by your side. But you have a covenant you must keep, and so do I," he says, so softly and so kindly, and Courier feels her anger melt away some. He wants this as much as she does. Though he's throwing up reason after reason why not, that was him admitting that he wants to be with her. If she can just figure out a way to make him see that, then she could fix all of this-

"Oh," she says as the thought strikes her out of the blue. They often do. It's like someone else speaking to her sometimes, but she doesn't dare say that out loud. Joshua might think she's lying about it now to get what she wants, or he'd say it was God talking to her. It's not God. She's not sure what it is, but she knows it's just a part of her that sounds louder and bigger than the rest. It's all her, all the time. Courier turns to look at him. "Then if you won't come with me, we'll have that life now. Until we reach your people, make a covenant with me, Joshua. Marry me." 

She gets the unique pleasure of seeing Joshua entirely caught off guard, no clever thoughtful words coming to mind for him talk her out of it, just the slightly widened eyes as he clearly tries to decide how serious she is. He might have been ready to fight with her day and night about what God wants and all that, but he wasn't ready for her to jump straight over it all and to what she really wants. 

Courier turns the rest of the way, straddling his thighs and putting her hands on his chest. "You won't stay and I won't make you stay, and you're right, maybe I can't take you everywhere with me and maybe God's in me or whatever, but! We've got a handful of days together. Until we fix the Transportalponder, we'll be out here alone, just you and me. So, let's live our life like this until we can't. Be husband and I'll be your wife, and we can live like we would have in another time and place. When we reach them, or when I fix the remote, then it ends and you go back to the New Canaanites, and I go back to the road." 

And she sets a hand on his chest, palm flat over his heart. Joshua sighs, and raises his hand to set it over hers, until their fingers are twined together. "I won't come with you. I'm going home to my people."

"I know." Part of her is still holding onto hope, but the rest of her knows it's true. He'll go back, and she can't stop, she can't ever stop. "So marry me." 

"I'll make a terrible husband." Joshua says it so sincerely and she can't help but crack a smile. He squeezes her hand. "I'm not the man I once was." 

"I like who you are now, warts and all. Just like you like me, even with me being the way the bullet made me." He's warm beneath her legs and her heart is beating hard in her chest as she smiles down at him. "Marry me." 

He lifts her hand from his chest and brings it to his mouth, kissing her knuckles lightly. She can see how much he wants this. It's in every fiber of his being. They're drawn to each other. Even if it's not forever, it should be for now. For a little while. 

She can see the exact moment he gives in, from the way his shoulders sag lightly to how his eyes get soft and bright. "I don't have a ring for you." 

"Is that how the New Canaanites do it? That's very old world of you." But she doesn't need a ring. Courier reaches over to pick up her gun, ejecting an energy cell. She holds it up and offers it to him. "You keep this from me, and give me one from your pistol, and we'll string them on leather and wear them until this is done." 

Joshua lets go of her hand and reaches to his own gun. With one hand, he has to be a little more careful with ejecting the clip and unracking a round, but he holds it to her in return. She takes his, and presses her own into his palm. Joshua presses the round to his lips, giving it a light kiss. "With this, I wed thee." 

"With this I wed thee." She repeats his words and actions, and then she leans in and kisses him on the mouth again. His arm settles around her waist, and in the ruins of the world, they kiss one another. 

Nothing's meant to last, but while it does, she's going to enjoy this. 

\--

Courier takes second watch, and when the sun is just coming up, she starts the coffee and goes to wake Joshua. He's sleeping soundly and she ends up just lying beside him instead, setting a hand on his wrist and feeling the multitude of thin scars along his skin. It's still a marvel that she can touch him without worrying about hurting him. 

He looks peaceful when he sleeps. She's heard people say that when people sleep, they look dead, but that's not true. Courier's seen enough dead bodies that if they were all piled on each other, one after the other, they'd make Black Mountain look tiny in comparison, and she's never seen a peaceful face among them. The dead stare off in the distance with empty eyes, or their faces are twisted in pain, or set in resignation, or they're shocked. They're shocked so often. None of them ever expected to die, even in the moment that death came to them and took them. Joshua is sleeping and his eyes are closed and his face slack and peaceful. He's handsome like this. 

She lies there until she hears the water boiling, and then she gets up to finish making it. 

When Joshua wakes up and joins her, it's not any different than the morning before, except that she's got his bullet strung around her neck on a cord, and when Joshua offers the energy cell to her, she strings it up for him too and puts it around his neck. It feels good having the bullet rest against her chest, that light little weight as a reminder of the difference in things. 

"You think we'll have the same luck as yesterday?" She asks him, sipping on her coffee. "How close are the number stations together?"

"Not that close. The next one might be a dozen days walk. We might come across a trader, if this route doesn't have too many raiders." He's given in and gotten into the last dose he has of painkillers, washing them down with his coffee. 

"How's the arm? You want me to tighten things up?" she asks, and after a moment of moving his arm, he nods. Courier scoots over and gets him strapped back together again until his broken arm can't move at all. And, with him so close to her, and with them married-for-a-bit, she leans in and gives him a quick peck on the lips. "Better?" 

"Yes, thank you." Joshua does his best to look collected and calm, but he sounds a little flustered when he speaks. There's a little blood in his cheeks and Courier gives him another peck to see if she can make it go from pink to dark red. "Courier-" 

"That's the last one. Well. One more." And she takes one more, but just that last one, because they do need to get moving. They finish up the coffee and kick dirt over the coals to smoother it, and get back to moving along.

It's not so different than yesterday. The weight of the bullet against her chest is a small comfort, as is the now-familiar presence of Joshua by her side. He's still got colour in his cheeks. Maybe she should be giving him kisses more often to keep him from going so grey. Courier's not sure how much affection is too much or too little. She supposes she'll find out soon enough. Joshua's always been good at saying how he feels about something, except it seems when it comes to how he feels about her. 

"You said your people get married." Courier's thinking about what he said last night, about how he'd make a bad husband. "Is it like how it is in the books? Big parties and fancy clothes?" 

"That depends on what books you've been reading, but yes, I suppose you could say there are big parties and fancy clothes. We keep to our forefather's traditions. Marriage is commitment. You serve one another, and you serve God, and you do as the good book commands." Joshua and Courier carefully navigate the uphill path as they climb through the valley the river cut, and when she gives him a look, he elaborates. "Genesis 1:28. 'Then God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the world and tame it; rule over the fish of the seas and the birds of the air, and every living thing that moves upon the face of this world.''" 

"Even the centaurs?" She thinks of them shambling about and finds it very doubtful that Joshua's book meant for that. Then again, Joshua's god apparently knows all kinds of shit, so maybe he does have a fondness for them. Courier kind of does if she's honest. They're kind of sweet. If they could just stop trying to kill her on sight, it'd be real nice. 

"When the words were written, Man didn't yet know about the centaurs." Joshua pauses to navigate some tricky terrain, and Courier steps in close to put a hand on his back to settle him. He's startled by the touch, but he takes it without protest, and Courier just grins to herself. "When they marry, my people bring their families together in a celebration, with everyone wearing their best. The couple exchange rings and speak a pledge that we will remain faithful and devoted to one another, no matter what trouble or temptations lie in our future. In that way, it should be familiar to what you've read." 

It does sound like the books. Rings, words, celebration. Though that does raise a question she has - "Why rings?"

"I'm afraid I don't know the reason for that. Tradition says we wear them on our left hands, but I don't know if anyone knows why anymore." He stops for a moment and gestures to her canteen. Courier uncaps it and hands it over so he can drink, and when he passes it back, she has a sip of her own. "The ripples of the old world continue long after the moments that made them have been forgotten. If I were to guess, I would say that rings continue now because they don't get in the way of fighting and they're hard to steal." 

"That makes sense. If you want to get a ring off, the easiest way of doing it is to take the whole finger, and that's a tricky thing to do in a busy place." And if someone decides to rob you out here in the wastes, then there's nothing to save you one way or another. She thinks about having a ring on her hand. Did some version of her from long ago have one? She doesn't remember ever seeing a mark on her hands. "I like what we've got better. Extra ammo in a pinch." 

"Only if we have the right gun on hand." Joshua has that smile on the edges of his mouth, like he's trying not to be amused by what she's saying. It makes him look sweet. 

"I always do, but I always have guns on me. No point in getting caught out here without a dozen on hand. Though that's its own trouble because next thing you know, you're carrying too much and you're all but crawling on the ground." Courier tucks the canteen away finally and they get moving, heading up the river. She can see how it'll start sloping pretty good in a few days time, and at least one day is going to be an all-uphill trek with Joshua. That's going to be tricky with his arm the way it is, but the two of them should be able to manage it. And it's still easier to go forward and up than it would be to track back down the valley and find a way around the hills. The grade on either side of them to the left and right is so steep that even Courier might not be able to climb out of them, nevermind Joshua. 

They walk until the sun is hanging low in the sky, and then they make camp for the night by the remains of a half-rusted metal dumpster on its side. It'll be good shelter if it rains in the night, and with the fire outside to bring a little heat in, it's not so bad to stay tucked in.

Joshua's sling gets tightened up again, but he refuses to take one of the doses of painkillers left, no matter how much Courier bullies him. "You can save the other dose for when we climb the hill. You should sleep easy while we can." 

"Believe me, I'll sleep fine. This is nothing," he says as if he isn't still a little too grey-looking for her tastes. She reaches out to give his cheek a pinch to see if colour will go back into it, and he looks exhausted - with her, or with life. Both, probably. "Courier-" 

"If you won't take it, then I want to make sure blood's still pumping through you." Courier watches as the pinch she's made fills his cheek with blood. Well, that's a sign at least. "You should still take more."

"Unless you plan on forcing it down my throat, then we should let this drop." Joshua turns to look at the fire, and for a wild moment, she considers doing just that. She could easily hold him down and make him swallow it, and it would be for his own good. But the more she actually thinks about it, the less she likes the image. He would be furious with her, but- maybe worse, he would be betrayed by her actions. 

She doesn't want to see hurt in his eyes. Courier sighs loudly and flops over, landing partly on the rusted metal and partly on the packed earth. "You're impossible! If you don't sleep well, then I'm going to make you take it first thing in the morning." 

"I'm sure you will." Joshua looks down at her, and for a moment, the exhaustion lifts and the look he gives her is soft and fond. It makes her heart go jogging in her chest. She wants so badly to have him look at her like that always. Courier knows she can't keep him by her side, but she wishes she could. 

She can keep him for now, and she reaches a hand out to him, opening and closing it a few times to egg him on into taking it. "Hold my hand. I read that touching other people helps too. 'Cause we all used to be apes, a long time ago." 

"You've been busy reading." And yet, he takes her hand anyway. His skin is rough with scars, all those fine little lines that remain after stripping away the worst of everything. His hand is warm in hers, and she gives him a squeeze, happy to hold on. Courier expects him to talk to her about what she's been reading and how it's not real or whatever, but he doesn't. With his hand in hers, he says, "I had to make myself forget how much I had enjoyed being touched, Courier. Everything else was something I could get used to. But being unable to touch others without pain was a torture I had not conceived of." 

"Oh." She hadn't thought of it. So far, she had just marveled over how nice it was for her to be able to be so affectionate with Joshua without worrying about hurting him. It hadn't hit her that he would want to be touched as much as she wanted to touch. She squeezes his hand. "It sounds terrible." 

"It was." His head bows for a moment, and she can see him struggle with his words, trying to find the right thing to say. For a man who always has something to say, it feels eerie to see him left mute. Courier waits quietly for him to put his mind together, rubbing her thumb against the side of his hand. "I had never been someone who was free with my affections. I think if I was, this would have killed me long ago. But you forget how often people touch you. Clasped hands and handshakes, and pats on the shoulder and back. You feel like an island, watching the little boats go up and down the river around you, but never landing on your shores." 

Courier gives him another squeeze, and she sits up a little, just enough so when she brings his hand to her mouth, she can press a kiss to his knuckles, and then press her cheek against it too. Is it too much to tell him how badly she wanted to touch him all this time? She still remembers the migraine, and Joshua in the darkness, and the gentle way he tended to her when she knew it brought him nothing but pain. Is that too intimate? They're married, but they've only kissed a few times, and she would like to lie with him, but she's not sure what Joshua wants. 

"I want to touch you as much as you'll let me." Courier says, because she wants to be honest, and she wants to know what he wants too. The only way she can find out is by asking him instead of staying in her head and wondering so hard that her brain buzzes. 

Joshua takes a moment to think about it and Courier waits for him to make up his mind about stuff. The fire is crackling a little and that's the loudest sound she can hear right now. They're in the middle of nowhere, even more nowhere than the Mojave usually is. There's nobody but them out there in the darkness, hand in hand. 

He sighs then and she sees him resolve himself in all those million little ways that his face moves. Joshua gives her hand a tug. "Here." 

And she goes to him. They settle against each other, Courier's head resting in the crook of Joshua's shoulder. It would be nice to put her head on his chest but he's got his broken arm strapped there, so the corner of his good arm works for now. And anyway- "We can switch later." She tells him. "I'll cradle you. My chest is probably very comfortable. I think. I've never laid on it myself and the robots never had much to say about it." 

With her head resting in the crook, she can feel it when he huffs out a soft laugh, more movement than sound. Joshua leans down and rests his mouth against the crown of her head, giving her a kind of kiss. "Thank you for the offer. That's kind of you." 

"It's more kind for me," Courier tells him, and when she gets another laugh, she just grins away and lets herself stay there cozy against him, loving that she can just do this and nobody is going to stop her. Better than that, not just that nobody will stop her, but that Joshua doesn't want to stop her. Joshua wants her here against him. 

Joshua wants her here with him, and she wants him with her too. 

\--

It's two days through the valley. They go a little slower than they should, probably, but Courier's not complaining and if Joshua's not complaining, then they're both in the same place. They both want this. They want each other's company. 

Joshua insists on doing his share of tidying and cooking, even with one arm broken. Courier lets him, since she knows how much she would want to do the same if things were reversed. He's still pretty good at working with one hand. 

"Did you have to work with one hand often after the burns?" She asks after watching him deftly assemble the fire and get it going. 

"Before. I broke my arm when I was out scouting with the Legion. We had no doctor and limited supplies, so we set my arm and I made do. I couldn't do much except point a gun the two weeks were isolated." Joshua settles and Courier gets the kettle in the coals so it'll heat water for tonight's thrown-together stew. "After that, I decided to make sure I wouldn't be entirely helpless again. I practiced using one arm and the other, in case I were to lose one." 

"Oh, that's smart." Courier is going to do that. Not that she's expecting to lose a hand or an arm but you never know. She probably didn't expect to get shot in the head, and here she is now. Though- oh, hmm. "I was thinking I should do that, but actually I'm pretty sure Big MT would build me a new one. They could probably make me a machine arm." 

What would that feel like? Courier taps her fingers together, thinking about it, imagining a claw in place, like one of the Protectron's hands. 

Joshua's looking at her, and he can probably figure out what she's doing from the curve of her hands. Courier just grins, tapping them together in a clink-clink motion. 

"I wish you the best if you go forward with that." Joshua says very diplomatically, and Courier gives the coals a shuffle and stir to give them air and keep them red. Then Joshua's face goes a little serious and in an instant, she knows what he's probably thinking too. It's a good feeling and it kindles a little fire in her chest. 

"I wouldn't let them put an arm on you until I knew they were good arms first," she tells him. "And knowing them, they might fuck it up more. But I would make them build you a gun that goes on your arm." 

"No, I wouldn't want that." Joshua says instantly, without even pausing, and Courier just laughs. She can't help it. It's the way he says it so sternly and so quickly. Courier's so taken that she leans in to kiss him, and he's not even flustered or shy. He kisses her right back, mouth moving against hers, and it makes her so happy to be here and now. When they break, her forehead rests against his for a moment, and she looks straight into those blue eyes. He looks right back and says, "The answer is still no." 

She cackles to herself and kisses him once more, but then she hears the kettle whistling, so she tends to that, and then to the stew they throw together with what they've got on hand and around them. 

Courier doesn't think much about the end of the journey. Who knows how many days that'll be? It could be all over tomorrow, or it could go on for another two weeks, depending on if they can find the electronics. There's not much in the hills for her to plunder and the few cars and shacks they find are pretty well picked over. People probably didn't live here even in the old days. This whole stretch of land is thick with greenery, growing wild and big in a way that is different than the places that used to be cities or highways. It reminds her of what she read in books about people going to parks. 

A park feels familiar in a way that she can't put her fingers on. It's like when she remembers things that might be real or might not be at all. The mind is quick and clever but it also misremembers stories as real things when you don't know what to compare them with. She's getting better at sorting out which parts of her mind are memories and which are tales, but there are ones that still pull at her senses and she can't be sure which ones they are. 

She makes them a lean-to that night, and as she takes her turn being the one that Joshua rests against, she tells him, "I might have a baby out there, I think. Or a child. Or- they might be an adult by now? I'm not sure. I've got this dream I have sometimes, but it might just be a story too. Lots of people have stories like that." 

Joshua knows by now that Courier draws a line between who she is and who her body was, and he keeps up with her conversation without her having to spoon feed him, which is nice. "Do you want it to be real or a story you tell yourself?" 

"I don't know. I think probably a story would make things easier. I might feel like I should go looking if there was a child." Her hand rests on his chest, just below where his arm is strapped in place. She likes the texture of his vest. It's a little rough, crisscrossed like his skin can be. Her fingers wander over the surface. "But they wouldn't be my child even if they were real and I found them. That was her baby. It would probably hurt worse to see my face all wrong, like those taxidermied things I saw in that museum." 

"It might,” Joshua agrees with her, and his head remains against her breast. "I occasionally thought about chasing down the wild oats I sowed when I was a young man, but for my own selfish reasons. The Legion wanted strong men to serve. The younger ones were easier to mold, and any I had would be the appropriate age to be trained and rise in the ranks." 

"You didn't go looking." He said he thought, not that he did. Joshua nods and she rests the top of her head on his. "Why not?" 

"I was busy enough with other tasks that it always sat at the bottom of my list." He sets his unbroken hand over the one she's left on his chest. "Any child of mine would become a slave in Caesar's eyes. The boys might have a chance to progress, while the girls would have nothing in the way of protection. In the end, it was for the best. If I had brought children with me, they would have been crucified before my eyes after the first battle for Hoover Dam. My fate was mine alone." 

She thinks of the little girl in the Legion camp that she saw fleeing with the other slaves as Courier stormed it with Boone and ED-E. They'd been in the midst of a battle and she had no time to chase after her and make sure she was fine. When all was said and done, and Caesar's chest cavity had a hole in it big enough for her to put a fist through, she had gone looking, but most everyone who had survived had fled, including most of the slaves. Hopefully she was okay with whoever had taken her with them when they ran. 

You try to save as many as you can, but you can't be everywhere at the same time. You can only be one place, and all you can do is work your best to make sure the place you're in is the best one you could be in. 

Courier sets a hand over Joshua's head, fingers running through the baby-fine hair there. It's growing in thicker and thicker, but she can see the spots where his hairline's retreated, never to return again. He's older now. She is too. In a way, it's a comfort to know that there won't be any children between the two of them. Courier can't imagine how she would manage a child. It would be safer if she were to leave it with someone and walk away, let them have something like a childhood that wasn't dominated by the warring and violence that her life inevitably fell into. 

"If we accidentally had a kid, I think I'd leave them with Boone." She tells Joshua, and he clearly hasn't been keeping up with her train of thought because he chokes some. That's okay. Courier just ruffles his hair. "Boone was going to be a father, before his wife and child were sold into slavery. We put a bullet through the skull of the woman who sold them off. Well. He did. I just found evidence and made sure to walk her into his sights." 

Joshua sighs in her arms, his body tense for a moment before it trickles out again. "We did terrible things. I could spend a thousand lifetimes making amends and still fall short." 

Courier nods. It's true. On an individual basis, what the Legion did left a scar across the world. Courier suspects she'll be finding traces it for the rest of her life, the slave camps and the trained men, and the poison promise of glory if you just give yourself over entirely. Joshua is to blame for his part in it. But- "You don't have a thousand lifetimes. You've got this one, so just keep doing better now. That's the right thing to do." 

The past is past. Only a fool would try to change it. What matters is what they do going forward. One day, they'll both be dead, and so will every other person left alive, and there's only going to be stories left. So she kisses his forehead and enjoys the feel of his back against her chest while the fire warms them both.


	4. Chapter 4

On the day of the climb, she insists Joshua take one of his painkillers. "It's a long way to the top. And probably a long way down the other side too. Hopefully we can make it up by mid-day and make it part of the way down by the time the sun sets. We're both going to do better if you're not having your arm feeling like it's stuck in a firepit." 

Thankfully, he doesn't fight her on it. Joshua just nods and takes the dose, and the two of them pack up and start. 

Courier thought it would be a hard climb and she's right. It's a tricky day going up the hill and the two of them are quiet through it, focused more on the climbing than the idle talk that's marked the last few days. But even though it's a hard climb, she's eager to see what's on the other side. Maybe if they're lucky, there's going to be some kind of trader or settlement along the way. Not that she's in a rush to hurry to Zion now, but Joshua's arm needs treating, and she should have whatever's broken in her face seen to properly. Med-x and stims and pushing the bone back in place is working for now, but she knows that nothing beats the Auto-Doc and sleeping in her own bed. Plus they're both running low on painkillers now - one dose left for Joshua, and a handful of things for Courier. 

At least they can tell this is traveled occasionally because there's little trails cut into it here and there, all of them too well-marked to just be bighorners. The tracks aren't too fresh either though, which isn't a bad thing. Too many footsteps could mean they're following the same path that lead those not-the-Legion-anymores downstream. There seems to be no end to them. She supposes it makes sense that they all just keep trying to remake the legion when there's nothing else for them. It's not as if they can return home, not when the places they once called home were razed by the Legion, broken and destroyed. Their original people were torn apart and the ones left behind were raised to know no other way, or else chose it on purpose. 

But, they could restart if they wanted to. Any of them could cast off the armor and become someone new. Any of them could be like Joshua. 

Alright, probably none of them could ever be Joshua. Very few people would be willing to wear that name after dragging it through the mud. It seems like a painful thing to face the worst of yourself and not look away, and Courier's sure most couldn't do that. But they could be like her. They could shed their skin and emerge as something new, and go off to find a life somewhere else. Walk until they find a place that will never know the name of Caesar, and become an ordinary person. 

Maybe she hadn't done the 'ordinary person' thing, but that was her. They could be different. Everyone could always be different if they chose to. 

As they finally near the crest of the hill, they hit a steeper section that brings the two of them to a stop. Climbing it will be easy enough for her, but with Joshua down an arm, and with it being a little too tall to just push him up to where it levels off, they're going to need to figure out something. 

"Maybe we can climb it together?" She frowns and eyes it up. It's easy to picture them both falling down when halfway up. It's fairly steep. 

"Go see what's above." Joshua tells her and nods to where the crest is. "There might be a better path you can spot." 

"Or maybe something I can use as an anchor so we can drag you up with a rope." She looks at Joshua and decides he's probably okay with an undignified option, but just not as a first choice. "I'll go look and be right back. Don't find something to fight." 

"I'm not the one who finds trouble around every corner." And the fond, mildly exasperated look he gives her just melts her all the way through. It sets Courier to smiling and she's still grinning as she scales it up and goes to see where their choices are. 

The top's right there, and she peeks over the lip, meaning to take a quick look but she stills instead as her eyes find the mass of people below. Tents and flags, everything a person needs for a Legion camp, which this is. Of course it's not the real Legion, but it's close enough that she stops and squats as she slings her pack off and digs out her binoculars. Courier quickly scans over the camp, making a tally in her head. There's plenty of soldiers there, most young, and their lines look sloppy, but all armed. There's slaves too, captives off in pens with what she's betting are bomb collars. And there's a few crosses up, with freshly crucified folks on them. They've camped along the river and it looks like it's fairly well established. 

Courier counts about three hundred men, give or take. The party they ran into that fucked them up was probably from this camp originally. Maybe they split off, or maybe this one's trying to establish outposts around the area. They might have it in their heads that they're going to be rebuilding the empire, or setting off with something new. 

About forty people in that pen. At least a third of them are children. From up on the ridge, Courier watches as two Legionnaires drag a woman back to the cage. Her heels are digging ruts in the ground and when they drop her inside, she doesn't move at all. Courier reaches for her gun on impulse, out of the need to strike hard and hot and fast-

But her hands still. She can picture what will happen clearly. A shot will send the entire camp moving, like a nest of ants with a foot shoved in it. Even if she can pick off a number of them from up here, she'll be overwhelmed eventually. Worse, she knows the people they've enslaved won't survive. Bomb collars. They'll have bomb collars on. She can't see them, but she knows in her heart of hearts that they'll be there. 

Everyone will die. So she takes a breath and scans over the camp and notes the places - the entrances and exits, the big tents and the small ones, the fighting pit and where the gates to the slaves opens up. And when she's got a lay of it, she turns to see if there's an anchor point or something she can use. There's a rock, a big boulder, and when she pushes on it, it doesn't budge an inch. Courier gets the rope snug around it and heads back to Joshua. 

She's just peeking her head over the edge when he gives her a sharp look. He knows she's got a good reason for taking so long. "Big used-to-be-Legion camp ahead. About three hundred of them, give or take, with a slave pen that's about half full." 

Courier drops the rope over the lip and waits to see if Joshua needs a hand tying it around himself. Even with a broken arm, he's still incredibly capable, and she watches as he gets it looped around his waist and pulls the knot tight. She gets a grip on one end, and Joshua braces one foot against the steep hill, and together, they manage to get him up it without dropping him down and breaking anything. It's easier once he's most the way up, since she can wait until he's in reach and then just grab him instead of the rope on her next arm-in, snagging his belt and yanking him to steady ground. 

They head up to the crest and before Courier gets the rope off of him, she passes him the binoculars so he can see for himself. As she coils the rope back up, she tells him what she's been thinking since she laid eyes on it. "We need to destroy it." 

Joshua doesn't disagree. He doesn't agree either, though. He just silently scans over the camp, doing the same evaluations she was doing when she put her eyes on it. It's not going to be easy. Actually, it's probably going to be suicidal if she thinks about it. Part of her is itching to dig out her turbo supply, slam all of it, and go down the hill like death itself. But every time she feels the impulse, she also feels clarity hit her, and she's fully aware of why it won't work before she even does it. 

Wow, she really can't tell Joshua about that or he's never going to shut up about the god thing. 

Courier tucks the rope away and sits herself on the anchor rock, waiting on Joshua. He was a general once for the Legion, and he's got a keen eye. In a way, she's lucky that she's running into them now with him, even if his arm is broken and she fucked up her eye socket and technically speaking, everything is slightly blurry on that side of her head. She would attack them no matter if she was alone or not. This way, she has back-up. Of course, she'd prefer to have ED-E and Boone at her side, since the three of them together were just about the world's most perfect Legion killing machine, but her companions are far, far away without the Transportalponder.

"Bet they have a new board," she mutters to herself. Bet they had a soldering gun too. Lots of ammo. Food. Supplies. Her eyes keep dragging down to the people in the pen. The woman's still lying there on the ground, not moving. Courier can see her still figure from this high up. There's bile in the back of her throat for a moment, and her hand twitches. She thinks about pulling out the sniper and going to work. 

Those bomb collars would blow up first. Once they had an inkling of who she was and why they were under attack, they'd detonate them all. 

Joshua drops the binoculars and breathes out heavy through his nose, his mouth pulled into a thin line. He's doing the work in his head. Then he looks at her, and she can see him figuring it out. 

"I can do it," she tells him, because she can and he knows she can. "With a plan, I can do anything." 

"So many men believe, until their plans fail," Joshua says, and lifts the binoculars again. It isn't a no. He knows better than to say 'no' to her though. It doesn't matter. Courier can't walk away from this. There are people down there. She knows what the Legion does. Courier can remember Siri standing in the camp and whispering to her about what the men were saying they would do to her, and what they did to the others. 

Siri was out in Goodsprings now. Doc Mitchell was finishing up her education and she lives in a little house and sleeps safely through the night. There were other Siris down there. Courier wasn't about to leave them behind and hope they'd still be here when she got back, or that they'd be in any shape to save. 

"I took out the Fort. It was three times the size. Maybe five." She and Boonie and ED-E had come in through Cottonwood Cove, fighting their way to the ferry and coming in hard and hot to the Fort. It had been an ugly battle. So many times, Courier had narrowly missed death. Boone had gotten knocked down, and she thought he might be dead for real that time, because he kept firing from the ground until he didn't fire another shot. ED-E had fought like a demon at her side, mechanical death and precision, and even the little eyebot had lost power and hit the ground.

Courier remembers running. She ran backwards a lot, laughing so loud and shrill that she knows she must have sounded like a monster. Her hands loaded her gun over and over, over and over, and they didn't miss once. Not once. Caesar's eyes had burned with pure rage that promised her that if Courier was caught, she would be lucky to have her head caved in by that fist. 

But she didn't get caught. Her head was still on her shoulders and Caesar was dead, bones rotting in the sun. Boone had lived, though he'd been pretty badly fucked up and spent most of the travel home passed out and on med-x. ED-E was more like Courier - just needing a few parts slapped in and they were ready to get rolling again. 

Courier doesn't have Boone or ED-E this time. She's got Joshua, and she likes Joshua, and she knows he's deadly. But Joshua also only has one arm, and she can't take him down into that camp. Boone was a nobody to the soldiers at the Fort, and so nobody felt the need to point a shotgun at his prone body and pull the trigger. 

If they see Joshua's face, they'll peel him apart. Him, and her. Well, they'll rape her first probably, they made that one clear years ago. It'll be ugly if they fail here. But Courier's not walking away. 

Joshua hasn't said anything yet. He's scheming. She can see from the way his shoulders are set. Courier sets her rucksack down and flips it open, counting up what she's got inside. Last time, she had back-up, which meant she had time to breathe now and then, to patch herself up and march forward. Until she hit the center of the Fort and found Caesar waiting with those power fists, she had kept herself pretty composed. Courier sets out her ten shots of turbo, one after the other on the rock. 

"Night time," she tells him. "I head down there two hours past sunset. I'll stick with a knife until they catch on, and then move to my guns. I'll start with... the barracks." 

"No." Joshua cuts her off, and he sets the binoculars down. Courier waits to hear his objection, because he knows she's going to do it anyway, so he won't be telling her not to attack. And his fingers move to point at a squat building in the center of the camp. "You'll need to deal with the munitions first. Get in there, get rid of the guards, and rig it. The first men who head inside after you're discovered will set the trap off, and destroy their supplies." 

Courier can't help but grin, big and bright and happy. Joshua's right. "Oh, perfect. See? Between the two of us, it'll be a cakewalk." 

Joshua doesn't smile, but that's alright. She gets her knife out and her sharpening stone, and gets to work. She's going to need to cut a lot of throats tonight after she takes care of the munitions. And then after that, the shooting.

He keeps on looking down at the valley and so does she. The best path will be straight down the side of the hill and then into the left flank. There's a fighting pit - because of course there is, there's always a damned fighting pit in the big camps - and there's the officer's tents and the munitions. 

"I'll go up the left," she tells him, and nudges her foot out to trace the path while her hand stay busy sharpening. "Sneak around the pit, by the officer's tents and to the munitions. Rig that, head back to the officer's and take them out, then move to the right and the rest of the camp." 

Joshua nods after a long moment. "I'll go up the right." 

Oh. Joshua thinks he's coming. Courier waggles her knife at his arm. "Your arm's going to get you killed." 

"I've survived worse," he says, because of course he does. It's her turn to purse her lips. She could try order him around but he's not a follower of hers, so he doesn't have to listen. Plus she knows herself that if things were reversed and she had the smashed in arm, she wouldn't sit up here and guard the fire while he went on to take on these bastards. But she also knows that if her arm was broken, she could fight on a lot longer than he could. 

Joshua is a tough son of a bitch, but Courier knows she's something else entirely. 

But alright, think about it that way then. She ponders and gets the edge of her knife razor thin. If she was up here and she had the broken arm, what would she do? If she couldn't fight head to head... 

"Oh!" She blurts out as it hits her: the deathclaws in the quarry! She had been in a bad way then but wanted to get rid of those big nasty bastards before they could eat more innocent folks. Courier quickly gets up and grabs her pack. The guns are all hung on the sides and backs, the big ones anyway, and it's a big one she needs. Courier unclips the sniper and kicks out the stand, setting it up right on the ground. Then she beams at Joshua. "There. You can snipe." 

His eyebrows go up, both of them, and it's delightful to watch his face change like that. How many times did she make him do that, only she couldn't see it because he didn't have eyebrows - and they were under those thick bandages? "I'm not a sniper." 

"Anyone who shoots can snipe." Courier gets her bag and checks her ammo, dumping them into her lap by the fistful. He's going to have to reload with one hand, so it's going to be easier if they're all set up proper so he's not digging around or fumbling through them. A lunchbox will do the trick. That'll keep them all organized, so he can load, fire, reload, fire, so on and so on. "Just look down the glass bits, aim, and fire. You might have to make a few shots to get it right, but from this high up, it'll be impossible for them to find you. And you’re too far up for any firelight to glint off the glass, though if you're worried that they're getting near, you can cover it up and move. I think I have another scope in my bag, I can set up another couple of them. You'd have to roll back and forth between them-" 

"Courier." Joshua's voice is sharp and she comes to a halt. Oh, she got a bit ahead of herself there. He looks very tired, and she feels bad for him. He's sick and exhausted, and she knows he doesn't want to stay up here. "I'll be coming with you." 

"No. You're staying up here, and you're giving me support." She cracks open the lunchbox and starts laying the shells out, stacking them. "You're deadlier up here spotting what my eyes can't on their own."

"I'm not a sniper." He says, and she flaps a hand because they covered this. If you can shoot, you can snipe. It's that simple. "Listen to me. If I'm your husband, then listen to me." 

She wants to snap out that she is - or that whatever he's going to say, she already knows and she knows better than him - but she swallows it down. Tempting as it may be, she takes a breath instead of snapping. Because he's right. He is her husband. If that means something, then she needs to let it mean something. "Okay. I'm listening."

"I don't doubt your abilities. I've seen them with my own eyes. God's touched you, Courier, and He's given you gifts. I know you killed Caesar and destroyed the Fort. I know that if there's anyone alive who can walk into a Legion camp and emerge unscathed, it's you. So when I say this, it's not because I lack faith in your abilities." He speaks so surely, and sternly, and mercilessly. 

She wants to kiss him. It's infuriating, because she's also angry at him for what she knows is coming. "Then what are you saying?" 

"I won't sit on this ridge and watch you die through a scope. I want to be at your side, not waiting on the top of a hill that I can't easily descend on my own." He lightly sets a hand over the bound arm against his chest. It's the first that he's admitted how helpless a broken arm makes him, especially in this kind of uneven and rough terrain. Joshua could make it down, she's sure of it, but... with a whole pack of assholes chasing him, and they've all got both arms? Alright. Fine. 

"I'm not dying here. You're not dying here." She looks down at the camp. He's going to insist on coming with her, and she can't let him and... urg. She's going to have to say it. Courier rubs a hand over her face. "Listen... this doesn't mean God is talking to me, no matter how it sounds. ... But... sometimes... thoughts come into my head, and... they always come true." 

"Visions." He speaks out the word she's been trying not to say. 

"Oh, don't call them that, don't call them visions." Courier peeks at Joshua out of the corner of her eye. Fuck, the look on his face. Courier groans and throws her head back. She knew she shouldn't tell him! "It's not seeing anything! And before you speak it, it's not god either! It's not anybody else. It's just me giving myself a push in the right direction. If I couldn't go down there, if I really couldn't go down there and do this, then I'd know it. I'd stand on the ridge and I'd feel that push telling me to stop." 

"Visions that reveal the future-" Joshua says her words back and Courier just covers her face with her arms. Her cheeks are burning now. She shouldn't have said it, but she had to say it, because she felt the push. Joshua moves and walks over to her, and she hears the soft shuffle of his feet on the dirt as he comes close and sits on her rock with her. He takes the lunchbox off while she's like this, getting it safe and out of the way. "That is God speaking to you." 

"It isn't." She doesn't even look this time. Courier doesn't need to. He's going to have that look in his eyes, like she's shiny and untouchable and more than Courier, and she's not. She's human. "It's me. It feels like me and sounds like me, and it's not somebody pretending otherwise either. So unless god sounds and thinks and feels exactly like I do, then it's not god." 

He's beside her now, just sitting there. At least she seems to have shut him up, because she's sure that he's ready to say a lot of things about her, but nobody's going to mistake her for his god. She's not that kind of thing. Courier just wants to do what's right, and she just happens to have a part of her that knows what right is. Sometimes that part knows the future, sorta. 

"What is the voice telling you now?" 

Courier feels her mouth twist a little because she's explained it all wrong. It's not a voice exactly and it doesn't speak to her the way he thinks, it's like... like a wall she can't see sometimes, letting her know not to go a certain way. And other times, it's a push, all but shoving her in the ways she should go. But... alright. Fine. He's listening, so she should appreciate that. She takes a breath and thinks, and speaks as she bounces off the walls and finds a path to go down. 

"If you come with me, we both die. Or, maybe I live and just you die, but that's not acceptable to me." She rubs a hand over her cheek and grumbles. "I don't do that kind of 'winning'. It's everything I want, or nothing. So... you staying up here feels right. And me going down alone feels right. It won't work if I'm not alone." 

He's quiet for a while. A good while. She sneaks a peek over at him, and he's still looking at her. At least now he's got a troubled look brewing there and not the whole worshipful devotion thing. Joshua is so important to her and the way she feels about him can't be questioned, but she's going to throw a fit if he keeps looking at her like she's treasure, and not herself. 

"You know you won't die." Simple, blunt, to the point. 

"Oh, never," she assures him, since it's just the truth of things. "I don't think I can, not by anyone else's hands anyway. I suppose maybe I'll be wrong one day, but it's a long way off."

Joshua is silent for a while. She can see him thinking about it. Maybe he still believes it's god or something like it. He's wrong but she can only say it so many times and so many ways. It is what it is. 

She lets him digest for a while, and does a little herself too. The lunchkit's by his feet and she picks it up so she can start stacking it full again. Courier gets why he's worried. If she goes down alone and dies, then he's worse off than dead - he'll be alive and trapped on this ledge, waiting for the Legion-wannabes to come up the hill and grab him, and probably crucify him this time. That's something she would hate too. And she knows that watching her get rough treatment will probably be hard on him too. Courier wouldn't want to watch him get tortured, knowing that she'd be next up when they got up to her. 

It takes a long while. He's a thorough thinker. She stacks all the bullets in nice and firm and when that's done, Courier uses the binoculars to watch the camp and look for more weak spots. People are predictable and they fall into patterns. If you have enough time, you can discover them eventually. That's how she found out that Chris and Manny had shacked up, which, good for them. Not everyone gets to be happy but she's glad Chris did, since he was nice enough, and he deserved something good after getting left behind. 

"I'll do what I can from up here, but it won't be much." Joshua finally speaks, blunt and to the point. He's not happy but that's okay. He doesn't have to be. If things were reversed, if the feelings in her body told her that she had to stay here and let Joshua go, she wouldn't be happy either. 

"Anything you do is better than nothing." Two hours past sunset, which means... five hours from now? She'll have to climb down in the dark, but it's always been easier going down than up. Plus, she's got some cat eye for the way down, though she won't need it once she gets to the camp. The last thing she needs is getting blinded by the light - and once they catch onto her being there, she's going to set the whole place up in flames and there's going to be plenty of light to see by. "You want a hand learning that sniper rifle? It's really easier than you think. The tricky part will be lying on your belly with your broken arm, but we can do something about that. I'll bind it to your side instead, set things up so you're rolling the other way." 

Though he's unhappy still, he just nods. Courier scoots close against him, pressing her thigh to his. He thinks they're going to die - or that she's going to die and he'll watch it happen to her, and then he'll be sitting up here waiting for them to come and grab him. But she won't. Courier knows that she'll survive this. Her heart is light and singing, and she can feel all her skin prickling in anticipation. 

"If you're going, then you should sleep before then. We've got hours left to burn," Joshua tells her, but before he's done speaking, she shakes her head no. She can feel the push. If she sleeps, then he won't be here when she wakes. He'll be trying to go down the hill by himself. 

"Oh, I've got plenty of drugs. I'll be awake for the next three days," she assures him, and nods to the collection she spread out for herself. Which, right, she starts picking the turbos up and getting them sorted in her things, where it'll be easy to pull and inject while fighting. "But you can sleep if you want. I'll watch-" 

"Courier." Joshua's tired of her. That's fair. She can feel the mania trickling in. All of her companions get tired of her quickly when she's riding that high. It's understandable. She feels like an untethered battle kite, swooping and attacking and ready to smash into the ground and start everything on fire. 

"Sorry," she tells him and means it, even as her hands stay fast at work. "I'll sort your arm out, and then I'll play quiet while we wait." 

Joshua's head bows down for a long moment. Courier finishes the turbos and shrugs her jacket off to lie in on the rock, then turns to start on his arm. She loosens up the straps while he thinks away, or while he figures out how he's feeling. Courier keeps her mania in check, though all she wants to do is talk and rattle her tongue. She gets the bandages off and checks his arm, keeping an eye on his colour. He's not as pale or green as he was before. 

As she gets his arm straightened out and she gets ready to lash him, she puts aside her excitement and leans in, brushing her nose to his. His eyes snap forward and she gives him a soft smile, leaning her forehead against his. "You said you were my husband." 

Joshua's mouth twitches slightly. "I did, didn't I?"

"I liked it a lot." And she kisses his cheek, one and then the other. "Thank you for marrying me, even if it's only for this while." 

She means to lean back, but he's with her then, following her and catching her mouth with his. Courier softens into it, and the two of them just kiss for a little bit up on the hill. The sun's warm on her skin and he's in front of her, and his good hand slides around her back until he has a grip on her back. Courier puts both arms over his shoulders and parts her lips for him when he presses his tongue inside. It's wet but nice. Robots sure can't do this. 

His hand pulls her closer, tugging until she finally slides into his lap. That's new, but she's not complaining. Neither of them are going to sleep much, so why not pass the time this way? Kissing's nice and a better way to relax than to spend all this time thinking and worrying about what's next. Joshua's kissing her like he hasn't before and it's good. She wonders if this is how he used to kiss people, back when he was young and sowing wild oats. Did she kiss people like this too, before she was herself? 

Courier tries not to get lost in thoughts. She wraps her thighs around his waist and he presses closer, and- oh! She feels his cock nudge against her, all hard and eager. That's an unexpected surprise. Courier rolls her hips forward and presses her weight hard down on him. The noise Joshua makes is wonderful. Her arms wrap tighter around his shoulders and his good arm grips her tight as she keeps pushing against him. 

"Courier-" Joshua moans her name into her mouth and she eats his words up. She could just do this forever. But they're out in the open, and it's unlikely the want-to-be-Legion camp will notice them, but it's still dangerous. She leans back and he follows her. It's very gratifying and she can't help herself, she gives him another kiss before she backs off. 

"We need cover." Courier glances around. They could go back down the hill, but that lip is hard to get up. It would be best to stay up here, but out of sight. Or they could go down the other side, find something flat. It's pretty steep though. It's a shame the can't pitch a tent up here but that'd be an even bigger flag than anything else. This is pretty much the worst place for this, but she wants him so badly that she doesn't care - and she refuses to put it off again. This is probably the only time they'll be able to do it and Courier wants him. He wants her too. 

Joshua's hand is low on her waist and it rests on the curve of her ass. His cock is pressing against the fly of his jeans, making such a nice bulge that she wants to run her hands all over. There's colour in his face this time, making his lips pinkish instead of pale. He looks with her and nods to a few straggly trees to the right. You could maybe call them a stand if you squinted, and they had barely more cover than the rest. But there was shade, and a place to lay down the tarp, and from this high up, their bodies wouldn't be obvious when in motion. 

Courier grins and gets off of Joshua, grabbing her bag and dragging out the tarp from the bottom. She dumps it on the ground between the trees, unfolding and cramming it against the gnarled trunks. Joshua's behind her, and Courier's already getting her belt open and shoving her pants down her thighs. "I'll sit on you, okay?" 

"We don't have many other choices," he says, his hand working his belt open. Joshua's broken arm hangs by his side and she really needs to bind it, but she's stepping out her jeans and leaving them on the ground. The shirt stays on and her hands help Joshua with his pants, yanking them down his body and helping him get them over his boots. 

He holds onto her as he sits and she climbs into his lap the moment he's settled, her knees on either side of his thighs. Joshua's cock presses against her and he lets out another of those low noises. Courier feels the thrill run through her again and again, shining bright. She wraps her hand around the base and holds him steady as she brings her hips forward and starts to sink onto him. 

It's not like with the robots. Machines feel different. Metal has no give. Joshua is flesh and warm and soft, and as she sinks onto him, she feels her body react. Though she's got no memory of it, her body knows what makes this feel best, and her hips tip as he slips in. Courier keeps her lips shut, not letting any sounds escape her. Joshua's hand grips her hip hard and he's as quiet as her, his mouth a grim line. 

Only when her weight rests on his thighs and all of his cock is slid into her does Courier let herself relax any. Her mouth opens, and she sighs out and presses her lips to his throat. Joshua feels good. He's inside of her, and she's on him, and his hand squeezes tight, and she just slides both hands down his vest, wrapping them around his back. When she meets his eyes, she's captivated by how dark they are, the blue the colour of a storm instead of a clear sky. 

Courier begins to rock down on him, and Joshua kisses her again. The bullet he gave her lies against her skin, and his hand holds her tight. Though his other arm is broken, he lifts it anyway, resting his hand on her thigh, squeezing it. She breaks the kiss for a moment, just to warn him. "Don't hurt yourself." 

"I won't." Before she can say more, he's kissing her again, and he lifts his arm more, setting his hand on the back of her neck. It has to hurt so much, but he's barely wincing. His fingers just brush over her skin and she squeezes him tight, gripping his cock as she rides him. 

It's all shorter than she wants it to be. But it's Joshua's first time, and if she's honest, she's used to machines, who only do what she wants. She still gets to feel him in her, and she feels him start to fall apart, first his breathing going tight and shallow, and then his body tensing hard. And then- "Pull off." 

Courier's not close herself, but she can feel that he is. Reluctantly, she slides off of him and wraps a hand around his now-wet cock. It's slick with her and she strokes him quick and steady, pointing him at her thighs. "I have you. Go on, Joshua."

His head bows and his eyes shut, and she watches his mouth open and shut a few times, until he groans and he comes in her grip. His cum goes over her thighs and he's very warm. She just keeps on stroking him until his hand comes around to stop her, and then she goes still. Courier sets a hand on his face and tips him up to kiss him, even as his eyes stay closed. 

Half a dozen kisses later, and he gets a hand between her thighs and she happily rides those fingers instead. Courier does her best not to hurt him any. He doesn't let on if she's putting too much weight on him, or if the arms around him are too painful. Joshua just keeps on kissing her and touching her, and the hand on her thigh squeezes as her hips rock faster. His thumb grinds on her nub while his fingers slide in her, three of them filling up her insides. All the world falls away and there's only the two of them, only the heat of his breath and the fingers curled and uncurling, and his voice so soft and gravely, saying again and again, "I have you. I have you. I have you." 

He does. Courier buries her face against his throat and she comes with a few good fireworks, her body twitching hard through them. She'd love to shout right now, but she just breathes hard against his neck and all of her throbs with pleasure. It's good. It's so good. She hasn't gotten a chance to do this in an age, even with just herself as the only partner. Courier's soaking wet, and she hears his fingers make that squishing noise as they slide out, and even though she feels like she's made of melted gold, she still laughs softly. "Sorry. You're going to smell like the sea." 

"It won't be the first time," he assures her, and the two of them stay like that for a long while, Courier with her head on his shoulder, and Joshua with both his hands on her bare thighs. It feels good. She could sleep like this, completely content in the world.

But danger is just ahead, so she can't, and she lifts her head. Joshua's looking at her with some sort of expression that she can't nail down exactly. Probably a mixed one, since all his feelings are. Maybe he's regretting this - or regretting that they're only doing it the once. Or maybe he's just thinking about tonight and the assholes over the ridge and their camp, and the nearly impossible odds. Or-

Well, he's thinking, and she doesn't want to, so she just kisses him again and then gets up so they can clean each other off. 

And then there's nothing else to do but wait.


	5. Chapter 5

Each of them taking turns sleeping for a bit before swapping with the other, waiting for the sun to sink. The camp continues on with their business, oblivious to death waiting above them. Courier binds Joshua's arm to his side to make it easier for him to move around when firing, and he helps her strap up and organize herself, until she's armed to the teeth. Then, just an hour out from darkness, as dusk rolls in over the land, Courier goes to the edge. 

She waits there. The voice in her head says wait, wait, wait, and so she does, waiting. This is going to be rough. She can feel it. It's going to be a hard one, a tight one, a to-the-wire finish-

"Courier?" Joshua says her name. She glances back at him over her shoulder. He looks uneasy. And somehow, that makes her feel better in an instant and she relaxes with a smile. There. She feels ready. 

"I'll be back soon," she promises. "Don't break anything on the way down. And if I look dead, I'm not. Just fix the Transportalponder and drag my body to the Big MT." 

"I don't know how to fix it," he reminds her, but she's already slipping down the hill. Courier knows he'll figure it out if he has to, but she also knows he won't need to. This will go the way it's supposed to. She'll survive, and they'll make it back to Big MT together. He won't die this time. 

Downhill is quicker and easier than uphill, as long as you don't start falling. She keeps her feet under her and she moves quickly, listening to the impulses that rocket through her mind as she skids down the hillside as quietly as she can. She takes the cat eye halfway down the hill, once the trees are more shadows than woods, and by the time she reaches the bottom, it's black as ink. The fires around the camp are bright, and she'll need to douse them - once she's ready. 

First things first - the munitions. She gets her knife out and creeps through the camp, heading up the left and taking care to avoid people. There aren't too many up past dark, but it's a Legion camp still and there's guards posted and there are officers making their way to and from the slaves. She would happily cut all their throats where they stand, but she knows already that won't work. In time, in time, and very little of it. 

The boys guarding the munitions - and they are boys, barely a beard between the three of them - are bored and not paying attention. She creeps up to the side of the building and she takes the first while the other two are chatting to each other. Hand over the mouth, yank back, slit the throat - and keep the neck tipped, so the blood drains and he doesn't choke and gurgle. The struggle is brief and he's fading as she lies him on the ground besides the tent, leaving him to bleed out. The other two are still facing each other, so she has to be patient, waiting for the lull and for one to turn away, to look towards the others. Courier strikes quick, and this time she worries less about the gurgle. After all, she can simply bring the blade up, and as the third boy looks towards her, she brings it down into his face, slamming it through his eye and straight into his brain. 

Three bodies. She stores them inside the tent, taking the keys and letting herself in. The world is green and grey and she avoids the lights, her eyes darting around to take in what's there. It's a shame to blow it all up, but she can't take it with her, and it's best they don't have it. There's lot of gunpowder and Courier tears it all open, scattering it everywhere and setting up frag mines. The first is set by the tent flap, and she has to quickly duck out after the initial arming click. The first man to set foot in there will be blown sky-high, and anyone on his tail will go when the rest of the tent goes. Ranger station Charlie won't ever know about this, but if they could somehow, she thinks they would find it pretty rich to see the Legion's tactics used against them.

She slips away, back into the darkness, back to the officer's tents. She can hear noises from within. Her hand tightens on the blade. The push comes. She follows her instincts and she avoids the door, slashing open the side of the tent and sliding in through the tear. 

Two officers, and a slave. They're naked and distracted. Courier kills them both, the knife buried in one's throat, and as he chokes and bleeds out, she grabs the other before he can shout, taking him down to the ground. Her knee slams into his chest, driving the air out of him as she cracks his ribs. Courier gets a look at his face as it twists and his eyes bulge, and then she's driving her thumbs into his eyes, popping them and twisting his whole skull. She stops when the snap comes, and he goes limp, the strangled wheezing in his chest going silent. The other one writhes on the floor, gagging and bleeding, but dead. 

The slave is silent. Good. Courier sits up and fetches her knife, bringing her finger up to make a whisper sign. Quiet. The slave says nothing. Maybe she's in shock. Courier takes a blanket from a bedroll and drapes it over her. "Stay put," she tells her softly. "You'll be safer here." 

If she understands, she doesn't say anything. But she doesn't run, and sometimes that's all a person can do. Courier leaves her bundled up and she takes her knife, tossing the room. It has to be here, or if not here, then in the others-

Yes, there it is, the remote for them. Courier keeps a careful hold of it as she heads to the next set of tents. The officers in this one are asleep and she makes her way through them one by one, hands over mouths, knives through throats, cutting and killing and moving to the next. They bleed out in their bedrolls, each death an end to a long line of suffering they've brought the people of the Mojave. Caesar is dead, and while the death throes of an empire have been ugly, she's more than happy to make sure that death takes. 

Her luck runs out in the last tent, when the man on the other side wakes before she can reach him. He yells, and she abandons the knife, grabbing at the holorifle on her back and bringing it to bear. She squeezes her eyes shut the moment she pulls the trigger, doing her best not to sear her eyes with the bright flash of holographic light. It must hit home because she hears the tell-tale crumbling sound. From there, she slams a fixer, ejects the used microfusion cell, and as the darkness slams back around her eyes, she heads for the slave pens. 

Courier can hear the camp coming to life and so she moves quickly among them, the flash of hard light tearing apart men to light her way. She overturns a brazier, spilling the coals and flames out and onto a nearby tent, letting it catch fire to serve as yet another distraction. The more to pull their attention in different directions, the easier it is for her to be like the fish and to dart through their nets. She reloads as she runs, and as she comes across the slave pen, she shoots at a guard by the main gate, the blue light slamming through his chest. Beside him, his partner lifts a spear and she takes aim-

And the sniper rifle slams between them both, smashing into one of the wooden posts - a miss from Joshua. The second shot isn't, and he slams it through the guard's waist, dropping him to the ground. He's still alive and Courier finishes him off with a shot. As he disintegrates into a pile of ash, she turns to look up at the hill. Courier can't see him, but she feels him look at her. Courier raises a hand the once, palm flat as she sends her heart out to her husband on the hill, and then turns back to the pen. She doesn't bother picking the lock, smashing it instead and throwing the gates open. Courier hits the disable on the remote and points to the woods. "Go! Go! Run! The collars are off!" 

That's about when the munitions tent explodes, and it's all chaos, loud and fire and screaming and people. The slaves run and Courier runs and guns, laughing as she feels the heat and fire light up her face. She throws herself into the instincts, asking no questions, barely thinking, just doing what her body wants. Run here, fire there, hide here, then go out again. It's madness in its finest, purest form, and she moves in the steps of a dance she knows well. Above her, Joshua provides support and every bullet he fires is a distraction, a death, a sign of affection - the deadliest kiss on a love letter written just for her.

Of course, they eventually realize she's among them. How can't they? The crack of hard light and the ashes in the wind and Courier among them, striding and striking, well, even they have to know what it means. She's heard they tell stories of her at the Fort and that makes her glad. Maybe they'll tell stories about tonight too. Maybe when they gather together in their little costumes, when they play at empires, maybe they'll look from one to the other and think of her rising from the darkness, the vengeance of all those they killed and raped and tortured, and they'll think twice. They'll run away and go back to farming and living ordinary lives. But tonight, they're all in their armor, and she takes them apart and splatters them over the ground, always thirsty for more blood. 

It's harder now. More of them, and they're pissed, and she's running backwards, just as she did on the Fort's hilltops, trusting her feet to keep her upright and not spill her or trip her. She's moving quick as she can, but the first bullet slams into her shoulder, the red-hot impact making her grip loosen for a moment. To the right, and she goes right behind a tent, and the machine guns tear up the canvas but she's out of sight and she gets the rifle settled against her and out she goes again, taking off the head of the man who shot her. There's a crowd clustered together and she drops frag mines as she leads them forward, scattering them when the first goes off. There's the copper-blood mist in the air, pink as a sunrise over the wastes, and there's a throbbing in her side, and she's been hit again but she doesn't stop. One of Joshua's bullets takes out a man in front of her and she shoots the others, and Courier's laughing, loud and long, and there's just the sound of gunfire and screaming.

She doesn't stop. The pain is something else, but she shuts it away and she moves even as her legs stagger and sway, even as her fingers are slick with blood and they slip as they load her holorifle. On impulse, she drops it and she brings out the pistols and fires them, and she just keeps pulling from her loaded weapons until she's dry-firing Joshua's pistol and there's no one left to shoot. The camp is burning down around her and there are bodies everywhere, but no one left to aim at. Courier sways on her feet. The blood is black by the hungry orange light and she looks as if she waded through a pond of ink. 

Her legs give out as she walks around the slave pens to make sure they're empty, and she has to sit down. Blood comes creeping out of her stomach and she realizes she's been torn up pretty badly. The pain is probably bad, but she just can't feel it. Courier puts her back to the fence and she takes a breath, easing her pack off. There's a stimpack in here, right? She has to have a spare one... Or some med-x. Maybe she should have raided the munitions tent but it didn't look like it had supplies. If it did, she feels like she would have known. 

One stimpack. Courier stabs it into her stomach and sighs as she feels some of the tension drift out of her. That's still a lot of blood, though. Huh. Is she going to die here? It seems pretty bad. She's alone without supplies, and Joshua's up on the hill. Maybe if she crawls, she can find where the healing powder is- 

Oh, right. She didn't didn't stop to loot any of the corpses. It's got to be there. She laughs at herself for the mistake, and she crawls over the ground towards the nearest few bodies, which are of the guards. One of them will have what she needs. The more she moves, the more pain leaks in, clouding her vision. She has to be quick, or she's going to pass out. But she can't move too fast, because the faster she goes, the quicker the fog comes on. So, steady. Slow. Bit by bit. Inch by inch. She keeps her breathing calm and slow. Her legs are barely working, but that's okay, because her arms are still moving. 

Courier crawls over the ground until she comes upon the closest corpse, and she paws through his armor, finding the secret pockets inside them all. There's a handful of denarius - useless - and a radaway - not particularly helpful here. She heads for the next one, her fingers clawing at the scrubby land to get a solid handhold. Come on, healing powder, healing power, healing powder-

"There you are." A hissing voice. Courier looks up. There's one of the soldiers. She must have got him at some point, because one of his arms is hanging loose by his side, and it looks kind of stumpy. He's got a spear in his other hand. Oh, shit-

She can't move fast enough. The soldier drives it through her, slamming it into her belly and pinning her to the earth. The pain is immediate and overwhelming, and she blacks out for a moment. She hears someone screaming - herself? It has to be herself. She doesn't feel the scream but she hears it, and when her vision fades in again, she's panting like a dying animal. Probably because she is. Courier claws at the spear but it's in deep. That's a problem. Though, it might be good too. She might bleed out if he pulls it out. Her hands hold fast, so he can't.

But he doesn't. He falls to his knees too and his teeth are dark black, coated with blood. The fire's light flickers over them both and he reaches behind him, fumbling with the Ripper on his belt. "I'm taking your head, and I'm putting it on our banner, and everywhere we go, they'll see your rotten, bloated face-" 

He's talking too much. Courier lets go of the spear, grabbing him instead. Her hands hook on his armour and she drags him down. There's the white of his eyes as they go wide, the shock and terror in that split second before he's pressed against her. Courier bites at him then, tearing and shaking her head back and forth like a wild animal would. He screams and struggles, but even pinned and dying, she's quicker. She's more vicious. She's the Courier and she crawled out of one grave, and no one will put her in her next easily. His throat tears and blood gushes out, pouring over her and soaking her. She doesn't stop savaging him until he goes dead and limp, and the blood stops pouring out of him, turning first to a drip and then a trickle. 

The soldier's heavy and she struggles to roll him off of her. But, not too far, because-

There, tucked in his armour - healing powder. Courier laughs, and she rubs it on herself. Next she gets the Ripper, and she's thankful for it, because she can cut the spear and move without taking it out. She nearly blacks out as she saws through it, and the vibrations feel like they'll tear her apart. But she gets through, and she gets the spear's tip from the ground, and she drags herself to the next body, and the next, and she keeps an eye out for what she needs.

It's daylight by the time Joshua makes his way to her. Courier's barely awake, and she's taken to burning herself with the welder now and then to keep her eyes open. She shouldn't smell nearly as tasty as she does, but she does. The Transportalponder is back together - more or less - and she's snapping the last bits in place when she hears familiar footsteps coming her way. Courier calls to him, though she only can let our a hoarse gurgle. 

And there he is, Joshua, looking beat to shit as well. He must have had a hell of a time coming down the mountain in the dark with one arm. His face is so pale, except where dark bruises are already forming on his face. She's thankfully awake, so she gets to see how stricken he looks when he puts his eyes on her. "Courier." 

She smiles up at him, showing all her teeth so he can see that she's fine. Courier's not actually fine at all, but she's still alive and she lifts the Transportalponder. Her other hand reaches out to grasp at him. There's a countdown happening here and they really need to go, now. 

Joshua kneels on the ground and pulls her up, getting his arms around her. Courier slumps into him, and she wants so badly to tell him that she was right - see, they made it through. He shouldn't doubt her or her plans. Yes, she's numb from the waist down and she can't talk, and she's probably a minute from her heart giving out, but that's a whole sixty seconds - plus a little more, because it's not like a heart attack kills you instantly. There's at least five minutes until brain death. Plus, she does have proof she can live without a brain too-

Right, she's drifting. Courier pulls the trigger, and the white light floods around them, replacing the dirt and blood and the smell of fire with the harsh lights of the Sink. Courier's got just enough time aware to take in the way the voices rise to greet her - and then fall into chaos as they see her. Joshua's lifting her then, and Courier just lets herself go fully limp. He'll take care of her. Everything will be fine. 

Courier passes out, which is fine, because she gets so bored in the Auto-Doc when she's awake. 

\--

She has no idea how long it's been when she wakes up. Her clothes are all gone and she's in a medical gown, which is a disappointment because she knows they had to cut her clothes off of her. She really liked that coat. The bullet is still there though, strung on a stained and bloody cord, but still hanging where it should. Her hand reaches up to grasp it and for a moment, she just lies there, holding tight to her wedding bullet. 

Courier's exhausted too, which is understandable but frustrating. Getting sewed back together is always really tiring. You wouldn't think surgery would be this exhausting though. All she ever has to do is just lay there unconscious. Everyone else is technically doing the work. But through the haze of med-x and the tingle of stimpaks, Courier floats and takes an inventory. 

A quick wiggle of toes and fingers reveals that they're all there and intact, and she moves her limbs and gets the same answer. She's very sore, but it's all there, and she's intact. Her hands reach up to pat her face and neck and she doesn't feel too many bandages. So she's probably fine. Who knows how long she was in the Auto-Doc though. 

There's the little grinding sound of a miniature securitron wheel. She turns her head to see Muggy rolling into the room and making a slow lap beside the bed. He doesn't say anything, but he looks at her and then rolls back out again. Courier rests her arm over her belly and drifts there, very far away from her limbs and torso. 

But she can't stay there forever, so after a bit, she forces herself to sit up, and then to shift so her legs are hanging over the bed. Courier closes her eyes as the room spins and then pushes herself upright, listening carefully to her body to make sure she can stand and won't just collapse. But, she stands, and she stays upright. So that's fine. She opens her eyes again, and Courier gets to moving, taking one step after another as she makes her way out of the bedroom and into the main room.

There's the usual noises, and quickly, four voices greeting her at once - Doc, the Sciu, the toaster, and Joshua. 

"Sir, you shouldn't be up!" 

"Oh hell, there she goes, get her to sit back down." 

"Yes, yes! Tremble in fear!" 

"Courier." Joshua steps towards her, quickly getting hold of her to keep her from wobbling or falling over.

She just grins, because- "Your arm got fixed. Feeling better?" 

"Fine," Joshua says, and he guides her away from the main room, back to the bed. She tries to crane her head to see the others, but Joshua is quietly insistent, shutting the door behind them to buy them a kind of privacy. He makes her sit back on the bed and then crouches down to take a look at her, as if it's not obvious how good she's doing. "Any pain?" 

"Nothing. It's all just sore." She sighs, and he's right there in front of her. Courier reaches out to drape her arms over his shoulders and press her head against his chest. "I told you." 

"You did," he admits, ever so reluctantly. She keeps her face against him, and he smells like the antiseptic from the Auto-Doc. Courier probably does too, though she hasn't taken a whiff of herself. He's right here and he's in a light shirt and his jeans and she just presses her cheek to his shoulder and hums softly. His hands come up slowly to touch her back and hair, his fingers working through the stubby remains. "He does speak through you." 

He means his god, and he doesn't, but she lets him have this one. Joshua can name it whatever he wants, but she knows the truth. It's just herself, just some grander version from far above who knows the outcomes telling her the best one. This time, she'll let Joshua have his belief and she'll just savour his arms around her - and the way she can feel the energy cell through his shirt, still hanging on his chest. "Come lie with me." 

Joshua must nod, because he says nothing and then shifts to get on the bed with her. She settles against him, and he puts both his arms around her, which is quite nice. Courier turns to lie on his chest, and it's easy to settle like that and to let his presence lull her. 

"We'll have to go looking for the folks I cut loose and make sure they're okay," she says out loud, partly for him, but mostly for her own sake as she works through what to do next. Courier needs to heal a little more of course, but not too much - and there's folks out there, scared out of their minds. They should look in on them and keep them safe. "You think your people would take them in?" 

"They would give them aid," Joshua says, and that's close enough for what Courier needs. They don't need to stay there forever - they just need a safe place for now. Then they can go where they need to after that. But before she can talk more, Joshua squeezes her arm. "But you need to rest. You barely survived." 

"Not the first time," she assures him. Courier's had plenty of close calls of all kinds, and this isn't the first time she was bleeding out all over the place. Granted, the last few times were with Deathclaws, and she had enough turbo and stimpaks to brute force her way through the impossible. It had mostly been about dodging those fatal blows, turning them into brutal, bloody swings that missed their mark just barely, giving her enough time to fire twice and put them down, or slam a stimpak in. "I'm very good at always coming through." 

The hand on her shoulder crawls up until it rests on her head again. Joshua strokes her hair, and his fingers rub against her scalp, stubby nails itching it nicely. "You're remarkable. There's no one else in this world like you." 

"There's you," she reminds him. Courier was shot in the head, and Joshua burned, and here they both are. They had business with the world and nothing was going to stop them. "There's probably a few others too, if we went looking. It's a big world."

It's Joshua's turn to be quiet and entertain her. She knows what he's thinking, but he doesn't say it, and neither does she, and it passes. Courier just closes her eyes and lets herself stay in his arms. 

"We should linger a little while," Joshua says - Joshua! Who said he couldn't stop! Who had to return to his home! - and she's so surprised that her eyes open and she turns her head up to look at him. He's looking down at her, and he's so handsome and serious, and his skin has those delicate little spiderwebbed scars over him, and his eyes are so blue, so vivid and beautiful and blue like the sky gets on the best days. 

"Yeah? We have things to be doing here?" she says, and he just twitches his mouth in the slightest smile. Courier grins and though she's tired, she gets up and leans in to kiss him. This time, he kisses back without any hesitation or shyness, and the hand on her head keeps her close. He wants her and he wants this, and she wants it too. 

Courier swings a leg over him, and then she settles into kissing him. There's no valley of enemies below them to spur them into doing this quick and fast, so she does it slow with him. Courier kisses him very thoroughly, leaving him breathless at moments and barely able to catch himself before she's back to it, back to him. Her hands reach up to touch his hair, and it's soft and thinning. Maybe in time, it'll wick away entirely. What will he look like without it? All delicate little scars up the back of his scalp, probably. Her fingers brush through the hair and she coaxes his mouth open with the next few kisses, until she can slide her tongue in, and feel the heat of his mouth from the inside. 

His body fits against hers just perfectly and she straddles him, rocking her hips down against his in slow, deliberate motions. It isn't long before she feels his cock hardening and pressing against her, which is real nice. She's glad he can react like this now, to her and just to things in general. Courier kind of wonders if he likes it. Maybe she'll ask him about it - in a bit. She knows she might ruin things if she asks now. Other people don't tend to deal well with her odder questions, but she's curious, and-

Right. Sex. Which is what they're going to have and can take their time doing too. With the door closed, the rest of the robots are outside and there's only the lights to watch - and the lightswitch doesn't kiss and tell. Courier reaches for Joshua's belt and starts to unbuckle it when Joshua puts a hand on her wrists and guides them away. She breaks the kiss and raises her eyebrows. "Hmm? Not that?"

"Not yet." Joshua puts his other hand on her and gets Courier to shift up, all while he starts going down. "There's something else I want to do first." 

It takes her a moment to realize what she means, and she just says, "Oh!" and laughs, quick to indulge him. Courier's not sure if this has ever happened before. It must have, right? Who knows. It's happening now, and as Joshua settles himself flat on the bed, Courier moves up to straddle his throat. She pulls the gown up and then off, dumping it on the floor so she's bare. Joshua looks up at her reverently, a fire in those clear eyes of his, and she barely bites back a question - is this like worship to him? 

It's sweet is what it is, and he brings his mouth to her, kissing her lower lips like he would her top. His hands wrap around her legs and she settles nicely on him, letting out a soft grunt as he slips his tongue in. It feels pretty good! "That's nice," Courier says, and she keeps her legs wide for him. 

Joshua knows what he's doing, which is nice. What they did on the hill was so quick that it was over nearly as soon as it started. Here, he takes his time and he kisses her real nice, his tongue busy dragging over all the soft velvety parts of her. There's the little nub that's the most sensitive of all and he pays special attention to that, his tongue flat as it drags over the surface and makes her shiver. She's come before on robots and fingers, but a tongue is a different thing entirely. He's not quick or demanding, but slow and tender instead. Courier sets a hand on the top of his head and runs her fingers through his hair as he eats her out. 

He's methodical, of course. Courier's always liked that about him. Relentless too. His mouth is on her, and the bullet from his gun hangs around her neck, lying between her breasts, and she feels so impossibly fond of him. How can't she? He's her husband in every way. "Joshua," she says, the words so soft in her mouth, "you're making me feel so good." 

Joshua tightens his grip on her body and his tongue keeps running over her - only this time, she feels his lips press against her, and her clit slips into his mouth. He sucks and she lets out another low grunt, her hips jerking forward at the sudden suction. It goes from nice to real intense real fast and he doesn't let up. She's gripping his hair a little too hard but she can't stop, panting as he keeps on sucking on her until the next noise that comes out is a loud cry.

He lessens a little, but only for long enough that Courier can catch her breath. Then he's back to her again, his mouth so hungry and so demanding, working her up again and again, again and again. She brings her other hand up to grope at her own breasts, pinching and squeezing as his mouth works her up. Fuck, she's being loud, and she knows the machines are all going to pester her but she doesn't care. Courier can't think about them. All she can focus on is Joshua's mouth as he eats her up and makes her shake and shiver. He's going to tear her apart. Right here in this bed, his face buried between her quaking thighs, he's going to utterly defeat her. 

"Joshua, please-" she begs him, and then he's sucking on her again and she's pitching forward, her hips grinding against his mouth as she comes. He sucks her through it, right until she's sensitive and moaning helplessly, and then he backs off.

But he doesn't let her go away. His breath is hot against her mound and he's speaking to her, his voice muffled. "Stay there. I'm not done yet." 

"Fuck," she moans, and then he's on her again, and Courier just gives in, letting him bring her to the brink again and again, until she's hoarse and her thighs are soaking wet. When he finally lets her be, when she strips him down and they turn so he can slide into her, there's no resistance at all. Joshua just goes in smooth and fucks her as he kisses her face, all of her wetness still over him. Courier gets her thighs tight around him, and the two of them rut on the bed until he's shivering and squeezing her. 

"I'm going to-" he moans, and Courier knows she should let go of him, but she keeps her legs around him and she presses her hands to either side of his face. "Courier."

"I know." Courier kisses him, and their mouths part, she feels his body stiffen, and then the strangest sensation of his cum spilling in her. It's warm and so's he, and they lie there a moment, still in each other and around each other. She rests her forehead against his and kisses him again and again. Courier doesn't know if it matters - even if something does take, she doubts anything will survive long with the life she leads. But it's nice thinking for a moment about the two of them leaving a life after the amount of them they've taken. 

He finally presses at her thighs to loosen and she lets him out, and they settle face to face, on their sides, Courier setting her hand in his. They don't talk for a little while, since they got out everything they needed to say while fucking. They just lie there in the dim light of the room, the fluids drying on their skin. It's good they did this where there's a shower so they can clean up. That's the best part of the Big MT - lots of water. You don't even have to feel bad about using it, since they're the only living things here capable of showering. None of the Think Tank can. Though a few of them need scrubbing. 

Joshua lifts his other hand to her chest, his fingers picking up the leather thong with the bullet on it. It's dark where the blood stained it, but the bullet shines bright as ever. He rolls it between his fingers and when he lifts his eyes to meet hers, the blue is the same colour as the sky after the sunrise fades. "Will you still come with me to meet my people?" 

"Yes." An easy promise. Courier will go with him, once they're done lingering here. She'll spend time with him and be married in the way of his people. Then, she'll head out alone for a while - but only a while. What felt temporary a few days ago now feels permanent. They've got wedding tokens, and when they stripped away everything else to clean her up, they left the bullet behind. "Let them meet your wife." 

His smile is so soft and faint, but it shines all through his eyes as Joshua raises both hands to her face to cup her cheeks, and from there, she just kisses him again. 

And they linger there a little while, as if they're the only people in the whole wide world.


End file.
